NOVEL FAQ
What is it?
The Neuro-Ophthalmology Virtual Education Library (NOVEL) is a web accessible collection of images, videos, lectures and other digital media for use by neuro-ophthalmology professionals, educators, students and patients. Find the collections at: http://library.med.utah.edu/NOVEL/
What is its purpose?
The NOVEL project's goal is to assist in the education of both professionals and the public about neuro-ophthalmologic topics. This would include:
- providing materials for professionals to use in presentations
- allowing students and the public to learn about a specific topic
How will this be accomplished?
There are several aspects to the project:
- Finding items of neuro-ophthalmic interest (currently we have several collections)
- Digitizing the items
- Peer reviewing the items for suitability and identifying them with structured language
- Putting them into the database with tags identifying them (structured language) and other associations (groupings, bibliographic references, text summaries, etc.) In addition to the structured language tag, each item in the database will have information describing what it is and many items will have references to papers on the topic.
- Creating web pages allowing access to the database for searching and education. This is accomplished by programs that query the database and display items.
- Checking for usability, and keeping the database current.
An approximately $450,000 grant from the National Library of Medicine obtained by the University of Utah Medical Library in conjunction NANOS (Kathleen Digre, Larry Frohman, co-investigators) will fund this project for the next 3 years. Preliminary work has been done digitizing slides from Dr. William Hoyt's collection. The database will be created using CONTENTdm. A structured language to catalog the items of the database is needed and currently UMLS (unified medical language system which includes SNOMED) is being considered. It is anticipated that NANOS will have to add items to this this structured language that fulfill needs unique to neuro-ophthalmology (for instance: choked disk).
What are the short term goals?
The first items to be put into the database will be digitized kodachromes. Thanks to the generosity of Bill Hoyt and Shirley Wray NANOS has a good start at building a collection. We will also be able to incorporate the images of the teaching slide collection that NANOS members contributed in the 1990's.
What are the long term goals?
The NOVEL web site will be "the place to go" for obtaining information on all topics of neuro-ophthalmology. It will have images and video to illustrate presentations. It will have references to seminal papers about topics of interest. It will have canned presentations and lectures.
How can I find out more?
The NOVEL Web site is at:
http://library.med.utah.edu/NOVEL/
The NOVEL Updates page is at: http://library.med.utah.edu/NOVEL/NOVEL_Updates/
Information about UMLS can be found at:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/
What needs to be done?
- Structured Language (standard nomenclature) Committee - charged with finding, adapting or creating a standard nomenclature for neuro-ophthalmology. Suggestions are to look at UMLS and SNOMED.
- Peer Review Committee - review all material submitted for placement in the database. The material will be reviewed for both appropriateness and quality. This could be accomplished electronically (sign off of a web folder). Work with Structured language committee to make sure accepted items are appropriately named/identified. Also supply references to topical papers which will be included with the database entry. These would be linked to Pubmed. The references used to create the rewrite of the BCSC Neuro-ophthalmology section might be a good start.
- Committee to look at established collections and acquiring materials.
- Usability committee - charged with beta testing the NOVEL web site to assure that "things work", the content is adequate and current, and the site meets its stated purposes of education and teaching.
- Committee to look for secondary funding.
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