Michelle Eberle <michelle.eberle@umassmed.edu> is the primary instructor for this course. Additional instructors include Terri Ottosen, Melody Kinnamon, and Rebecca Brown.

Course Description: Want to improve your consumer health collection and services? Interested in improving your reference skills for providing health information for the public? Then, this class is for you. We will start with a discussion about the information seeking behaviors of consumers. This class will focus on the provision of consumer health information services for the public. We will cover health literacy, planning the service, the reference interview, consumer health online, collection development, collaboration, community partnerships, outreach and marketing. Students will also learn about how to stay up to date on consumer health librarianship.

Educational Objective: Participants will: Ø Gain knowledge about health information seeking behaviors Ø Be able to test readability of health resources and recognize the need for easy to read health information Ø Know how to evaluate online health information Ø Become familiar with quality health information resources Ø Learn about collection development for consumer health Ø Learn important skills for marketing their library’s services and resources Ø Learn about health information outreach and the power of community partnerships

Agenda: The course will include a month long asynchronous course shell on http://nnlm.gov/moodle. Students may log in to the course shell 24/7 as needed. The class will also include a 2 hour mid session and 2 hour wrap up session on Adobe Connect in real time. During the 2 hour mid session, students will have the opportunity to evaluate the quality of two consumer health web resources (one of high quality, the other poor). The wrap up session will address any questions that arose during forums and online discussions during the class. The wrap up session will also allow students to give feedback to the instructors for future edits to the course.

Need for This Course: The instructors are frequently e-mailed from medical librarians through out the country with requests to take the class. The distance learning class will provide a format to reach librarians all throughout the country.

The instructional methods used include Lecture, Discussion, and Hands-on Exercises.

Participant Materials: All participant materials will be available through the Moodle course shell.

Additional Evaluation: We plan to use a Survey Monkey version of the Medical Library Association evaluation.