On the Air and Online! Librarians and Doctors Using a Blog and Radio Show to Communicate with Listeners About Health

Objective: Health Sciences librarians partner with producers of a weekly health-oriented radio show hosted by clinicians. Librarians helped develop the show?s interactive website/blog, provide weekly content links, and continue to help improve website functionality as the show expands in scope. They help the show?s staff find and use images appropriately and analyze statistics to understand user behavior on the blog/website. Methods: The show is hosted by Family Medicine clinicians in the School of Medicine at a major southeastern state university and airs on local AM radio. The university?s health sciences librarians provide assistance with the website/blog and supplement radio content with website links to reputable consumer health websites. The show?s website was developed as a WordPress.com blog, which interoperates with the show?s other social media. Audio podcasts are available via iTunes. Librarians selected MedlinePlus terms for indexing of medical topics and are exploring supplemental indexing for non-medical topics. Librarians use WordPress?s Site Statistics to analyze blog/website use. Challenges include communicating with everyone involved, improving blog/website functionality as it and the show expand in scope, helping the show?s staff understand and implement appropriate use of images on the website, and scheduling librarian coverage of shows. Results/Outcome: The library is listed as a sponsor on the show?s website and is acknowledged on-air weekly. Hosts mention librarian assistance when directing listeners to the website for more information. Website statistics reveal that the blog has been visited more than 10,000 times in just over a year. The library link on the website/blog sidebar is among the most frequently visited links. This partnership increases the public?s access to quality health information via the radio and blog. Feedback from the show?s producer and hosts has been favorable and the partnership continues. The show anticipates syndicating and expanding across the state. Discussion/Conclusion: Both the library and the radio show have gained from this unique partnership. Through this project, librarians have obtained valuable practical experience that helps them in their work with other users. They have augmented online resources for finding and appropriately using images and have received library support to explore the more flexible WordPress.org platform for this and other projects. In collaboration with clinicians they are bringing better health information to the public. The librarians have made valuable contributions in areas including social media, design, knowledge and provision of consumer health resources, and health information literacy. Subject (LCSH): Academic libraries -- Relations with faculty and curriculum