Events

David Little, Wellcome Library

Who am I and what do I do?

Project Officer for the MedHist history of medicine gateway: http://medhist.ac.uk
MedHist: a collaborative effort between the Wellcome Library and the BIOME health and life sciences hub to build an Internet gateway to high quality resources for the history of medicine
Summary of my role: project management and gateway development; selecting, evaluating and describing history of medicine Internet resources; gateway promotion.

Background

MedHist is part of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), a distributed network of subject information gateways ("hubs") in different academic disciplines, primarily aimed at staff and students in higher and further education. Gateways are searchable and browsable catalogues of resources which have been selected and described by librarians and subject specialists.
You can find out more about the RDN and search a "union catalogue" of all the hubs' resources by visiting the RDN Web site at http://www.rdn.ac.uk

What the work involves

Project management: overseeing the overall development of the gateway and liaison with external suppliers and content providers
Documentation: creating policy documents for the selection, evaluation and description of Internet resources
Finding, evaluating and describing resources
Web site technical development: HTML coding, image creation and creation of cascading stylesheets
Web site content development: Writing editorial content for the site, including general information about the site, help pages and "headlines"
Co-ordinating meetings of the MedHist Advisory Board of academics and subject specialists
Promoting the gateway to its target audience

Project management

Overall responsibility for running the project
Fix timescales, assign responsibilities for work and make sure everyone (including yourself!) does what they say they are going to do on time
Developing browse structure for the Web site
Keep abreast of technological developments in the area of Web technologies, particularly those relating to resource discovery. Take forward any development ideas
Recent work: sharing of gateway records with other related gateways (Humbul and SOSIG); implementation of RSS news feeds

Documentation

Creating guidelines for the evaluation and cataloguing of Internet resources
Evaluation: define subject area (very important!), decide on which resources to collect and not to collect; decide how you evaluate resources
Cataloguing: how to catalogue resources and editorial guidelines for the writing of resource descriptions

Finding, evaluating and describing Internet resources

Finding

Identify tools for resource discovery (search engines, other gateways, mailing lists, current awareness services etc.)

Evaluating

Describing

Catalogue "bibliographic" style information - i.e. author / title / publisher / URL etc.
Write brief but detailed descriptions of the resource
Assign keywords from the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) thesaurus

Web site technical development

Web site content development

In addition to writing resource descriptions, write content explaining the site and how to use it (e.g. how to search and browse)
Write "headlines" -use news stories to suggest possible searches on MedHist - e.g. the Iraq crisis: try searching MedHist for resources relating to the history of biological and chemical warfare

Advisory Board

Creating an advisory group of academics, subject specialists and RDN representatives who discuss gateway policy and give the project their seal of approval. Details of the group are on the MedHist Web site

Gateway promotion

Making announcements to mailing lists, speaking at conferences, writing articles for the professional / academic press (e.g. Ariadne, Dlib magazine, Wellcome History)

Skills involved

Ability to coordinate projects and manage time effectively
Understanding of Internet searching and online information sources within the subject area
Analysis and evaluation - maintain a critical eye when assessing Internet resources
Eye for detail - for cataloguing
Editorial skills - ability to write clearly and concisely for the Web
Technical skills - understanding and or experience of using different Web technologies and standards (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, multimedia technologies)
Real enthusiasm for the Internet

My own background

Studied history and politics at university, took an MA in modern history; qualified as a librarian in 1999
Post qualification: worked in technical posts, assistant systems librarian at the London Library, Web developer for the BBC
MedHist project: use technical skills and knowledge along with more information-based librarian skills; allowed me to develop project management skills, particularly relating to Web projects

More information

David Little, Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
Email: d.little@wellcome.ac.uk
Web sites: http://medhist.ac.uk; http://library.wellcome.ac.uk