This Project is designed to establish a regionally shared audiovisual collection to meet the nonprint continuing education and inservice education needs of the health care personnel of the seven Aroostook County hospitals. The collection will be established in association with the two existing shared education/information services supported by the Aroostook County hospitals; Northern Maine RAISE (a regional approach to improved health services through education) and the Aroostook Health Information and Resource Consortium. This arrangement will allow for the most consistent organization and use of the shared resource. The current Coordinator of the Aroostook Health Information and Resource Consortium will be the Project Director/Principal Investigator. The Coordinator will, in conjunction with the Director of RAISE and a hospital representative Advisory Council, survey educational needs assessments, preview recommendations and establish selection criteria. The Project Director will be responsible for acquiring, organizing, cataloging, promotion and distribution of the materials. This will be done through the existing interlibrary loan channels of the Aroostook Health Information and Resource Consortium with the support of the Northern Maine RAISE Associates in-service education network. The establishment of a regional shared collection of basic audiovisual educational software will improve local access to and increase use of audiovisuals. The Project will also reduce the demand and dependence on other state and regional sources of audiovisuals. A process for determining user reaction to the materials and a process for evaluating the Project's progress will allow for on-going assessment of the quality of the materials, the quality of the service and the success of integrating audiovisuals into the existing continuing and in-service education programming.
