SHELSI (Shared Hospital Electronic Library of Southern Indiana), is a consortium of health care institutions that will negotiate agreements for a group license and web access to a core of electronic medical textbooks, handbooks, and electronic journals. Participating institutions will share existing print resources through Docline. The project will provide training on the use of MEDLINE and these resources. SHELSI institutions agree to participate in the training and evaluation, and provide continued funding for succeeding years. Phase 1 of SHELSI was for eighteen healthcare institutions in southwestern Indiana. Phase 1 has been successfully implemented with four hundred health professionals being trained to use the SHELSI resources. Data has been collected that shows how the resources were used. Phase 2, a continuation of SHELSI Phase 1, is for twelve institutions in southeastern Indiana with offers to train all health professionals in the region. This project is a follow-up to outreach projects in this part of Indiana where there are many unaffiliated health professionals and the healthcare and related information needs are significant. It is designed to utilize telecommunications and technology to deliver knowledge-based information to the point-of-care.
| Richwine, M P; McGowan, J J (2001) A rural virtual health sciences library project: research findings with implications for next generation library services. Bull Med Libr Assoc 89:37-44 |
