The Health Sciences Database a Knowledge Management System
Susan Albright and
Tarik Alkasab, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
ABSTRACT:
The Health Sciences Database, HSDB, has grown from a multimedia curriculum repository to a knowledge management system for faculty and students. The six Tufts University health sciences schools now support and use it. The HSDB continues to serve as a curriculum repository, and provide administrative support (schedules, on-line evaluations) but our recent and future plans further our knowledge management initiative. Our new XML and web-based authoring tools and applications promote
¨ Intelligent faculty markup
¨ Management of digital collections
¨ Personal knowledge management including creating personal collections and annotations ñ carried by students across years and potentially after graduation
¨ Back-end smart connections to other electronic resources such as HEAL, publisher collections, and MEDLINE
¨ Concept mapping to link information across courses, schools and years
Curricular information stored on the web is handy for student access but a knowledge management system is much more than this; for students a kms enables integration particularly between clinical and basic sciences education: for faculty it fosters sharing across courses with proper attribution, administrators can not only find where a subject is taught but the didactic content as well. All users should be able to link out in an intelligent way from the Tufts system to digital repositories: digital libraries, bibliographic databases, publisher's material, or even other institutions' collections.
Recently the HSDB has been adopted by the NYMC to determine if another institution can use the infrastructure. Our goal is to partner with other institutions and digital library projects such as HEAL to further our knowledge management goals. We would be interested in feedback from the Slice of Life conference participants.
BENEFIT TO
PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:
The Health Sciences Database, HSDB, has grown from a multimedia curriculum repository to a knowledge management system for faculty and students. It provides a means for faculty to share digital information, is an administrative tool and allows students to manipulate and annotate information in ways meaningful to them. Learn about the system. Discuss the initiative to build a system that can be shared with other health sciences schools and digital repositories using national standards. Decide if such an initiative would work at your institution.
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Susan Albright 145 Harrison Ave. Health Sciences Library Tufts University Boston, Ma. 02111 Phone: 617-636-6708 Fax: 617-636-4039 Email: mailto:susan.albright@tufts.edu Website: http://www.hsdb.tufts.edu |
CO-AUTHORS: Tarik Alkasab 145 Harrison Ave. Health Sciences Library Tufts University Boston, Ma. 02111 Phone: 617-636-2481 Fax: 617-636-4039 |