Hi, I’m Susan Barnes, Assistant Director of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Outreach Evaluation Resource Center (OERC). I manage and, with my colleague Cindy Olney, contribute posts to the OERC Blog.
Rad Resource – OERC Blog: Our blog provides summaries of publications and events related to evaluation of library and health information services for our National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) audience. The NN/LM is a network of libraries and information centers that promotes access to quality biomedical and consumer health information managed by the National Library of Medicine. The OERC supports program evaluation in the NN/LM through its publications, classes, and consulting services. The OERC Blog is one of our publications and we include items about using evaluation for library advocacy, practical evaluation approaches, summaries of recent research, and book reviews. It is not a very busy blog; we published 13 posts in 2011.
Hot Tips – favorite posts:
- Can Tweets Predict Citations? January 3, 2012. Article about an investigation of whether tweets predict highly cited articles [they do, at least for articles published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research].
- How Many Interviews Are Enough? September 27, 2011. Presents an evidence-based guideline of twelve interviews in studies involving highly structured interviews of a relatively homogeneous group. The author cautions that more will probably be needed if the topic is diffuse or the population is heterogeneous.
- IdeaScale—Quantified Qualitative Data. September 19, 2011. Description of the IdeaScale software, which is designed to support “crowdsourcing” to collect feedback from communities.
- Can I Hear You Now? September 9, 2011. A TEDtalk , “5 Ways to Listen Better,” presents the RASA acronym –Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask—an approach about interpersonal listening that could be useful for teaching and building interview skills.
Lessons Learned – why I blog: I find blogging to be a useful way to provide my reflections and reactions to articles I’ve read and presentations I’ve attended.
Lessons Learned: I have learned that it is easy to postpone the creation of blog posts, but when I actually work on a post, it’s kind of fun and doesn’t really take too long. I have also learned that blogs receive a lot of spam, and I’m grateful to our IT administrator for installing the Akismet plugin to protect the blog from most spam. Sus
This winter, we’re running a series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.