Rural Outreach Training Efforts to Clinicians and Public Library Staff: NLM Resource Promotion

A project provided access to NLM resources for health care providers, public library staff, and consumers in rural New York. Computer workstations and training were provided for hospital and public library staff. Use of NLM resources was evaluated through pre- and postsession surveys and comparisons with control libraries. A total of 118 staff was trained in hospitals, 67 in libraries, and 488 public end users. NLM resource usage increased dramatically and stayed high one year post-training for all groups. Public library staff made the most dramatic changes in acquiring consumer health information. Familiarity with NLM resources increased consumers' and physicians' use of online health information.