Current Awareness Service -Royal College of Surgeons

of England

Implementing and developing a service

Tom Macmillan – Information Services Librarian

tmacmillan@rcseng.ac.uk

Overview• Background about the RCS

• Overview of the Current Awareness Service

• Challenges to overcome

• Ways to evaluate and improve

• The email marketing approach

Background• The College is a membership organisation of around 20,000 surgeons worldwide

• Library provides information needs for surgeons particularly through online journals

• Surgeons must keep up to date with clinical and professional standards and research

• Vast amounts of medical research published every month

Current Awareness Service (1/2)• The bulletins were

implemented in response to members’ requests

• Tailored for individual surgical specialties

• Delivered as an email using Campaignmaster email marketing software

Current Awareness Service (2/2)

Specialist Advisory Panel give advice in setting up new bulletins. They advise on:

• Sub-specialties to include e.g. Paediatric craniofacial surgery for Plastic surgeons

• Publications to consult and study types and topics to include

• Systematically hand search each journal every month

• Identify likely articles by titles and abstracts

• Critically appraise before including in bulletin

Hand search the latest issues of between 50 and 80 journal titles as well as other sources

Summarise the methodology and results

Provide links to the journals we subscribe to along with a link to the relevant help pages on our website

Current Awareness Bulletins (1/2)

The bulletins are overseen by a Specialist Advisory Panel of clinicians

• Compiled using an HTML email editor

• Sent to all members who have registered an interest in that surgical specialty. For example, Urology was sent to 711 members last month

Current Awareness Bulletins (2/2)

Screenshot of the entire bulletin (Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, May 2014)

The bulletinTOC of one journal(Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Vol.133, Iss.6)

BulletinJournal TOC

37 Plastic surgery titles plus 44 general medical and surgical titles

• Getting to know the subject

• Keeping the bulletins comprehensive but concise

• Technical issues with HTML editor

• Keeping interest levels up – avoiding negative reactions from email overload

Challenges to overcome

Email marketing approach (1/2)• The key measures in email marketing are click-through

rates and open rates

• Open rates signify interest

• Click-through rates signify engagement

Email marketing approach (2/2)• Accessibility – ensuring the bulletin looks the same in

all email clients

• Test beforehand with different email accounts and different devices

• Outcomes – make it as inviting and easy as possible to use the bulletin

Evaluation (1/4)• Campaignmaster allows for detailed statistical analysis

– all links are tracked

We can see which articles are getting the most clicks, and who is clicking

• E-journal access has significantly increased

Evaluation (2/4)

• We can see emergent themes about which topics are most ‘in-demand’

wordle.net/create

Evaluation (3/4)

• Text analysis helps reveal dominant themes too

textalyser.net

• Getting to know the subject by reading editorials in the prestigious journals is also a good way to gauge the contemporary issues in a subject

• Collaboration and feedback

Evaluation (4/4)

Developments to come (1/2)

• We ran a survey to get qualitative feedback

• Members were very positive about the bulletins, but negative about e-journal access

• Members called for more bulletins to cover other surgical specialties. This is what we are now working towards.

• Collaboration: We are exploring ways in which Members could identify and assess content for the bulletins

• Engaging with users is very important and can help contribute to their CPD portfolios

Developments to come (2/2)

• Evaluating the bulletins’ impact on clinical practice

Review• RCS is a large membership organisation with a

remote user-base with specific information needs

• The Current Awareness Service helps surgeons get to the information they need in a quick and efficient way

• The email marketing approach is one way to try and overcome some challenges

• There are always things to improve on

Thanks for listening!

tmacmillan@rcseng.ac.uk

Any questions?