The development of NMAP - The UK's gateway to high quality Internet resources

in nursing, midwifery and allied health.

NET2002 Conference

Rod Ward

Rod.Ward@sheffield.ac.uk

http://nmap.ac.uk

Topics

• Why quality gateways to Internet Resources

• What NMAP is

• NMAP history funding & partners

• NMAP Usage & Evaluation

Issues of quality on the Internet

• Sheer volume of information• Ephemeral nature of much information• Ease of self-publishing

• the personal home page phenomenon

• Lack of peer review or editorial and refereeing processes

• Possible serious consequences of inaccurate health information

Limitations of search tools

• Indiscriminate, unwieldy retrieval from search engines

• Output mostly lacks context

• Word spamming & relevancy ranking

• Advanced search features can be complex

Difficulties in evaluating Internet resources

• They cannot be browsed in the same way as print

• They tend not to have a set of common features • (such as statement of responsibility,

introduction, preface, table of contents, index)

• There may be time and cost implications

NMAPWhat is it?• NMAP provides access to evaluated Internet

information for nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, health visitors, dieticians, occupational therapists & other allied health professionals

• Aimed primarily at the UK HE, FE communities & practitioners

http://nmap.ac.uk/

JISC & the RDN

JISC Committee for Electronic Information

1998 – call for proposals resulted in the creation of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN)

RDN

RDN - http://www.rdn.ac.uk/– Aims to become a resource discovery service across a wide range

of subject areas

Co-ordinated by the Network Centre, the RDNC– BIOME – life and health sciences

– SOSIG – social sciences

– EMC – engineering, maths, computing

– Humbul - humanities

– PSIgate – physical sciences

BIOME

BIOME• a “parent” service, providing access to, and integration of, five

gateways to quality Internet resources. Focused on HE, FE and wider audiences

Gateways• OMNI – health and medicine & NMAP • VetGate – animal health

• AgriFor- agriculture, food and forestry

• Natural Selection – natural world

• BioResearch – biological/biomedical sciences

History & funding

December 1999– JISC call for proposals (05/99)

NMAP bid submitted by:– University of Nottingham– University of Sheffield– Royal College of Nursing

NMAP

• Who is it provided by?– Partnership between the University of Nottingham,

University of Sheffield and Royal College of Nursing– In collaboration with:– Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, – College of Occupational Therapists, – Community Practitioners and Health Visitors

Association, – Royal College of Midwives & – NHS National electronic Library for Health

Simple– Free text search, phrases, automatic “AND”,

punctuation accepted– N.B. Also searches OMNI (6,500 records)

Advanced– Options to:

– limit your search by resource type e.g. mailing list, teaching materials, practice guideline

– Display a list of titles only– Truncation

Searching

Browsing NMAP

• Alphabetically (by NLM headings)

• Keyword - MeSH headings or RCN headings

NMAP searching in the NeLH

• NeLH VBLs & NMAP developed together.• avoid duplication – URLs in NMAP not separate

database• annual licence • NeLH Professional portals search NMAP using

RDN-Include – see http://www.rdn.ac.uk/rdn-i/• Integration gives users a “one stop shop”

Tutorials

Part of the RDN's Virtual Training Suite (VTS).

• Internet for Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors.

• URL http://nmap.ac.uk/vts/nurse/

Internet for Allied Health

• URL http://nmap.ac.uk/vts/allied/

NMAP Usage & Evaluation

• Since launch (April 2001) we have been keeping statistics about the service.

• During November & December we ran an online questionnaire completed by 671 users

• Further work on search, browse & HCI is continuing

Number of Records in NMAP database

NMAP Records

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Mar-01 Apr-01 May-01 Jun-01 Jul-01 Aug-01 Sep-01 Oct-01 Nov-01 Dec-01 Jan-02 Feb-02 Mar-02 Apr-02 May-02 Jun-02 Jul-02

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Pages Served

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40000

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Mar-01 Apr-01 May-01 Jun-01 Jul-01 Aug-01 Sep-01 Oct-01 Nov-01 Dec-01 Jan-02 Feb-02 Mar-02 Apr-02 May-02 Jun-02 Jul-02

Pages linking to NMAP(according to Altavista)

Sites linking to NMAP

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4500

Mar-01

Apr-01 May-01

Jun-01

Jul-01 Aug-01

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Dec-01

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Apr-02 May-02

Jun-02

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UK

Worldwide

Excluding nmap domain

User Evaluation - User responses to question

Using NMAP, can you find the information you want easily

Easy to navigate No. of responses Percentage

YES 564 87.9

NO 78 12.1

Nil response 29 4.3

User Evaluation - User responses to

question about the relevance of NMAP resources

Relevance of resources No of responses Percentages

Excellent 163 24.3

Good 402 59.9

Average 51 7.6

Poor 11 1.6

Unsatisfactory 5 0.7

Nil Response 39 5.8

User Evaluation - User responses to

question about work category

Work Category No. of Respondents

Nurse 340

Student 192

Lecturer 170

Researcher 94

Librarian 53

Midwife 27

Other 26

Health Visitor 24

Physiotherapist 16

Occupational Therapist 5

Operating Technician 2

Radiographer 1

Speech Therapist 1

User Evaluation - User responses to

question What type of organisation are you from?

Organisation No. of responses Percentages

Not affiliated to an organisation 21 3.1

UK NHS 280 41.7

UK Further Education 29 4.3

UK Higher Education 199 29.7

UK Other 27 4.0

Non UK Organisation 70 10.4

Nil response 45 6.7

The future

• Project extended to Jan 03• Continuing to increase the number of records (and

maintain by link checking & review).• Awaiting news of transfer to JISC “Ongoing

Service” (and attached funding)• Feedback welcome on the website – particularly

comments about the usefulness of NMAP to nurse education now and in the future.

The development of NMAP - The UK's gateway to high quality Internet resources

in nursing, midwifery and allied health.

NET2002 Conference

Rod Ward

Rod.Ward@sheffield.ac.uk

http://nmap.ac.uk