Delivering knowledge for practice: a World Wide Web-based example. (Technotes).

Delivering knowledge for practice: a World Wide Web-based example. (Technotes). TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH seeks to reduce the gap between research andpractice by improving the conversion of advances in knowledge intoadvances in client care (Hudgins & Allen-Meares, 2000; NationalInstitute of Mental Health, 2000). Overall advances in client care willbe diminished or enhanced by the processes that are used to deliverknowledge to practitioners. This column will describe a World WideWeb-based process that has been designed to improve social work practiceby locating knowledge for practice and making it more accessible topractitioners. The Internet is increasingly being incorporated into our daily life(Korgen, Odell, & Schumacher, 2001; National Telecommunications andInformation Administration, 2000). For instance, according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. theNational Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA NTIA National Telecommunications & Information AdministrationNTIA National Telecommunications & Information AssociationNTIA National Telecommunications InteragencyNTIA National Telecommunications and Information Administration ), inthe United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. : * The share of households with Internet access See how to access the Internet. soared by 58%,rising from 26.2% in December 1998 to 41.5% in August 2000. * The share of individuals using the Internet rose by a third, from32.7% in December 1998 to 44.4% in August 2000. If growth continues atthat rate, more than half [italics added] of all Americans will be usingthe Internet by the middle of 2001 (NTIA, 2000, p. xv). Internet use among social workers appears to be rising as well.Barnett-Queen (2001) randomly sampled licensed social workers in NewMexico New Mexico,state in the SW United States. At its northwestern corner are the so-called Four Corners, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet at right angles; New Mexico is also bordered by Oklahoma (NE), Texas (E, S), and Mexico (S). (n =403). He reported that 87% of those sampled had access to theInternet and that 71% had used it during the previous year. Among thosewho had used the Internet during the previous year, Barnett-Queen foundthat 65% had used the Internet one or more times per month to seekresources for client services; 64% had used the Internet one or moretimes per month to do research (research was not defined in the survey);and 61% had used a search engine one or more times per month. Some writers have focused on the promise of the World Wide Web forsocial work educators (e.g., Vernon, 2001) and practitioners (e.g., Finn& Holden, 2000; Holden & Finn, 2000; Holden, Rosenberg, &Meenaghan, 2000). Others have focused on the negative impact oftechnology on the profession (e.g., Kreuger & Stretch, 2000). Themost promising role that I see for the Web is as a knowledge storage anddelivery system, despite the fact that it currently remains chaotic,rapidly expanding, and less than optimally edited. This situation requires multiple problem-solving efforts. Onepotential solution is the development and maintenance of some type ofvirtual social work library (e.g., Lohmann, n. d.; Patterson, 1996).Efforts such as PubMed Central PubMed Central is a free digital database of full-text scientific literature in biomedical and life sciences. It can be reached at [1].It grew from the online Entrez PubMed biomedical literature search system. PubMed Central was developed by the U.S. , the National Center for BiotechnologyInformation's digital archive of life sciences journals (Varmus,Lipman, & Brown, 1999) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National e-print server for physics, mathematics, nonlinear A system in which the output is not a uniform relationship to the input. nonlinear - (Scientific computation) A property of a system whose output is not proportional to its input. sciences, andcomputer sciences (McKierman, 2000) can serve as potential models. World Wide Web Resources for Social Workers The World Wide Web Resources for Social Workers site (WWWRSW WWWRSW World Wide Web Resources for Social Workers ) hasbeen developed over the past eight years by myself and others(www.nyu.edu / socialwork / wwwrsw). WWWRSW does not rise to the levelof a virtual library. For instance, we do not yet have librarians on ourteam, we provide limited reference and user advisory services advisory servicesadvisory services provided to the public, in their capacity as owners and managers of animals, are an important part of veterinary science. They may be provided by government bureaux, by commercial companies who deal in pharmaceuticals or animals or animal , and ourcataloging is simple. The goals we established for WWWRSW were to: * provide links to a comprehensive range of social service-relevantknowledge * provide links to high quality sources * allow keyword searching and browsing of entries in the WWWRSWdatabase * provide a well-maintained, reliably operating site * be responsive to user input The WWWRSW team strives to keep in mind the range of professionalactivities that social workers throughout the world engage in and therange of problems that these professionals and their clients experience.The attempt to achieve this breadth of coverage is a worthy butpotentially overly ambitious goal. We focus on high quality resources,although this is an elusive goal. We are restricted by what is publiclyavailable on the Web and our ability to find it. Much of what is on theWeb is not peer reviewed nor is it subjected to other editorial control.We make an initial determination regarding quality that is based inlarge part on the source (cf. Health Summit Working Group, 1998). Forexample, we are more inclined to link to something at the NationalInstitutes of Health than to a commercial site, and more inclined tolink to an educational institution's site than anindividual's. Beginning in the fall of 2001 we enlisted en��list��ed?adj.Of, relating to, or being a member of a military rank below a commissioned officer or warrant officer.enlistedAdjective theknowledge and skills of a set of editors: Jeane Anastas, KathleenBarker, David Biegel, Jerry Finn, Alun Jackson, Warner Johnston, ScottMigdole, Robert Schilling, William Spitzer, and Mark Watson For other persons named Mark Watson, see Mark Watson (disambiguation).Mark Watson (born September 8, 1970 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a professional soccer player who has earned the second most caps in the history of the Canadian national team. . They havejoined the Editorial Advisory Board, which includes Suzanne England,Thomas Meenaghan, and Gary Rosenberg. We hope that this group of editorswill provide peer review that improves the quality of the materials onthe site. These editors will review WWWRSW content in their area ofexpertise and make recommendations regarding content that should bedeleted or added, guided by the criteria developed by the Health SummitWorking Group (1998) to assess the quality of information on theInternet. Of course, positive outcomes require both editorial control bythe site owner and critical thinking by the user (cf., Lynch, Vernon,& Smith, 2001). A primary focus of WWWRSW is to provide direct access to full-textmaterials in the grey literature. This term refers to literature"produced at all levels of government bodies, academics, business,and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is notcontrolled by commercial publishers" (Luzi, 2000, p. 112). There isa wealth of high quality, social work-relevant knowledge contained inthese full-text materials, ranging from the scientific and technical, tothe more political (e.g., Malina & Nutt, 2000). Complementing thisgrey literature content, WWWRSW provides links to 1,873 journals andprofessional newsletters, 90 of which are links to journals ornewsletters with full-text articles online. The third goal for WWWRSW is to ensure that users have multipleways to access the information in its database. In addition to browsingthe hierarchical categories, WWWRSW users may now perform tailoredsearching at the top level of the site or use an advanced searchcapability that allows the use of Boolean operators (e.g., and, or,not). In addition, searches can be tailored to be narrow (searching linktitles or category titles) or broad (searching both link and categorytitles simultaneously). Browsing and searching are enhanced by"deep linking" (linking to URLs below the top level of asite). For instance, we have links to individual article titles foreight years of BMJ BMJn abbr (= British Medical Journal) → vom BMA herausgegebene Zeitschrift . A social worker can submit a search on WWWRSW for anexact phrase like "qualitative research Qualitative researchTraditional analysis of firm-specific prospects for future earnings. It may be based on data collected by the analysts, there is no formal quantitative framework used to generate projections. " or "focusgroups," and although they might not have thought to browse the BMJsection, such a search will return links to BMJ articles on thesetopics. The volatility of the Web means that site maintenance is atime-consuming activity. Maintenance of the site is both manual (Iemploy up to four part-time research assistants in addition to doingmaintenance myself throughout the year) and electronic (LinkbotDeveloper Edition 6.0, Tetranet Software Inc., 2001). New links areadded one at a time. Deletions and updates are aided by software, butstill executed manually. When the American Medical Association (AMA)restricted access to their online journals to AMA members and fee-payingcustomers, we had to remove over 2,400 links from WWWRSW in one day. Finally, in terms of responsiveness to user input, I am generallyavailable via email and I get a substantial amount of feedback, which iswelcomed. We do our best to incorporate that feedback, though somesuggestions are impractical im��prac��ti��cal?adj.1. Unwise to implement or maintain in practice: Refloating the sunken ship proved impractical because of the great expense.2. or off-mission. Primary support for WWWRSW is provided by New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of University's (NYU) Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, the Divisionof Social Work and Behavioral Science behavioral sciencen.A scientific discipline, such as sociology, anthropology, or psychology, in which the actions and reactions of humans and animals are studied through observational and experimental methods. in the Mount Sinai School ofMedicine This page is about a medical school in New York. For other uses, please see: Mount Sinai (disambiguation)Mount Sinai School of Medicine is a medical school found in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. , and federal work study funding. Additional support is providedby NYU's Office of Electronic Publications. A key developmentalphase of the project was generously sponsored by Dr. Helen Rehr and anever-changing cast of volunteers have made important contributions(total sweat equity Sweat EquityThe equity that is created in a company or some other asset as a direct result of hard work by the owner(s).Notes:For example, rebuilding the engine on your 1968 Mustang to increase its value. for the team is estimated to be over $200,000). Site Utility This is a problem area with which we are still grappling. Does itmake sense to compare WWWRSW with a source like Social Work Abstracts(SWA)? The "over 37,000" (National Association of SocialWorkers, 2001) entries in SWA have typically been the subject of greatereditorial control and their existence is more stable. The paper versionis published quarterly and the electronic version is updatedsemiannually. SWA offers more search options than WWWRSW. SWA is notfree. The subscription for the CD-ROM version (Social Work AbstractsPlus which includes the Register of Clinical Social Workers) iscurrently $1,205 per year. Aside from the Register, the entries consistof citations and abstracts of scholarly literature (articles ordissertations). The 57,000 entries in WWWRSW are links to publiclyavailable, Web-based materials that have been subjected to varyingdegrees of editorial control and are less stable than the SWA content.WWWRSW is updated daily, it is free, and it provides links to a widerrange of materials than SWA, many of which are full text. Social workers need to assess the utility of the sources they useon a regular basis. Old knowledge sources change, new knowledge sourcesappear and the methods of interacting with all of these sources change.If the user does not keep up with the changes in how a source is used,the utility of the source will likely decline. Database currency and cost are important factors. For instance theWWWRSW team added a new category during September of 2001--9/11/01--thatis designed to assist New York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. social service workers in respondingto recent events. I think it is time that we consider ideas such asHarnad's (2001) proposed system of university-based e-print serversfor the peer-reviewed literature. This could potentially reduce costsand offer greater academic control of the knowledge production anddistribution process. One future task for sites like WWWRSW will be tointegrate content from such e-print servers. Further, if recent reportsof a massive "invisible web See deep Web. " prove to be accurate, the WWWRSWteam will need to design coverage strategies for it (Bergman, 2000). Asnoted by Sherman and Price (2001), the invisible web contains those: [t]ext pages, files, or other often high-quality authoritative information available via the World Wide Web that general-purpose search engines cannot, due to technical limitations, or will not, due to deliberate choice, add to their indices of Web pages. Sometimes also referred to as the "Deep Web" or "dark matter." (p. 57) Another aspect of a website's utility that we all experienceis the percentage of dead links. Notess (2000) reported an averageproportion of dead links of 5% for eight search engines. WWWRSW isconsistently maintained at 3%. Figure 1 describes traffic on WWWRSW (which is part of NYU Web)since January 28, 2001. This information was recorded using Wusage 7.1software (Boutell.Com, Inc., 2001). The three peaks represent increasestemporally associated with large mass emailings about the site tovarious groups of potential users. Use between February 4, 2001, andOctober 20, 2001, averaged 473 visits per day. NYU Web has over 120,000Web pages. During the same time period WWWRSW was the 10th most frequententry point into NYU Web (mean rank: 9.95, where 1=the most frequententry point). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Is WWWRSW useful for social service workers? Unsolicited un��so��lic��it��ed?adj.Not looked for or requested; unsought: an unsolicited manuscript; unsolicited opinions.unsolicitedAdjective feedbackthat is overwhelmingly positive, low percentages of dead links, and thelevels of use shown in Figure 1 provide some preliminary evidence thatwe may able to answer this question affirmatively af��fir��ma��tive?adj.1. Asserting that something is true or correct, as with the answer "yes": an affirmative reply.2. . Yet, this will remaina weakly supported assertion until we are able to complete additionalresearch on the processes and outcomes associated with WWWRSW. Fordevelopment purposes, it would be useful to understand how and whensocial workers typically decide to use WWWRSW versus other sources; howthey use it; the percentage of time they find useful information;whether they use that information in their practice; and whether theythink that information had an impact on client outcomes. Conclusion WWWRSW is designed to support social work education and practice.It is free, constantly available from anywhere in the world, andconstantly evolving. Whether or not the use of such a website will havea "positive cascading effect on social work education and servicesprovided to clients" (Gambrill, 2000, p. 394), remains a questionto be answered empirically. References Barnett-Queen, T. (2001). Attitudes and opinions regarding the useof the Internet for continuing education continuing education:see adult education. continuing educationor adult educationAny form of learning provided for adults. In the U.S. the University of Wisconsin was the first academic institution to offer such programs (1904). among social workers. Journalof Technology in Human Services, 18, 145-169. Bergman, M. K. (2000). The deep Web: Surfacing hidden value.Retrieved October 25, 2001, from http://128.121.227.57/download/deepwebwhitepaper.pdf Boutell.Com, Inc. (2001). Wusage 7.1. Retrieved October 4, 2001,from http://www. boutell.com. Finn, J., & Holden, G. (2000). Introduction. Journal ofTechnology in Human Services, 17, 1-5. Gambrill, E. (2000). Honest brokering of knowledge and ignorance.Journal of Social Work Education, 36, 387-397. Harnad, S. (2001). For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free therefereed research literature online through author/institutionself-archiving, now. Retrieved September 30, 2001, fromhttp://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/ ~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm Health Summit Working Group. (1998). Criteria for assessing thequality of health information on the Internet--policy paper. 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Retrieved October 25, 2001, fromhttp:// www.nimh.nih.gov/tbsia/priority.cfm National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (2000).Falling through the net: Toward digital inclusion. Retrieved October 5,2001, from http://www.ntia.doc. gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide. Notess, G. R. (2000). Search engine statistics: Dead links report.Retrieved October 4, 2001, from http://www.notess.com/search/stats/dead.shtml Patterson, D. A. (1996). An electronic social work knowledge base:A strategy for global information sharing See data conferencing. . International Social Work,39, 149-161. Sherman, C., & Price, G. (2001). The invisible Web: Uncoveringinformation sources search engines can't see. Medford, NJ:Information Today. Tetranet Software Incorporated (2001). Linkbot Developer Edition6.0. Retrieved October 4, 2001 from http://www.watchfire.com Varmus, H., Lipman, D., & Brown, P. (1999). PubMed Central: AnNIH-operated site for electronic distribution of life sciences researchreports. Retrieved October 4, 2001 fromhttp://www.nih.gov/welcome/director/pubmedcentral/pubmedcentral.htm. Vernon, R. F. (2001). Back to the future. Journal of Social WorkEducation, 37, 571-573. Gary Holden is professor, Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, NewYork University New York University,mainly in New York City; coeducational; chartered 1831, opened 1832 as the Univ. of the City of New York, renamed 1896. It comprises 13 schools and colleges, maintaining 4 main centers (including the Medical Center) in the city, as well as the , New York, NY. Address correspondence to Gary Holden, Ehrenkranz School of SocialWork, New York University, 1 Washington Square North, New York, NY10003-6654; email, gary.holden@nyu.edu.