Our university is a thematic university established on the theme of health. It carries out education and training activities in the field of health only. With two main hospitals, our university is an institution that provides convenient facilities and health services to students. In addition to education and health activities, one of the university's activities is research and development. For this reason, there are many research and development centers within the university.
Accordingly, our university has three main areas of activity: health care, education, research, and development. The mission and vision of the university are shaped by these three main activities. Our libraries operate in these three areas. The user profile of our library mainly consists of students, academicians, physicians, and other health professionals and researchers.
Within this context, I support the scientific studies of our university as a librarian and academician. Since 2016, I have worked as an expert librarian at BVU (Bezmialem Vakif University). Additionally, in 2018, I took on an academic role. Our library that aims to support scientific and academic studies has put veritable efforts to make thousands of print and electronic resources it has more visible and accessible for the users.
Since 2016, I have been working with my library director and with our JOVE subscription. We have carried our efforts to become visible into a different dimension. We have developed our work in different places with your database which contains a video and a lot of visual content. In 2017, through JOVE we have conducted revisions within the framework of our database.
Library Databases Opened Visibility Activities in 2017
- There are relevant banners about various databases in the library, hospitals, research centers and related boards of the faculties.
- There is a presentation desk in the library and there are printed promotional materials related to the databases.
- The database developments are communicated to all university staff via e-mail.
- The developments in databases are announced via the social media accounts of the library.
- With the help of companies and librarians whose expertise centers on the use of databases, general training planning is developed at the university, the announcement to all users and the realization of the training is assured through general training planning within the university.
- As part of the medical education courses at the Faculty of Medicine, students are given a course on medical librarianship. In this course, they are provided relevant information about the databases.
- At the beginning of each semester, our library presents new databases to our students.
- There are relevant banners about various databases in the library, hospitals, research centers and related boards of the faculties.
- There is a presentation desk in the library and there are printed promotional materials related to the databases.
- The database developments are communicated to all university staff via e-mail.
- The developments in databases are announced via the social media accounts of the library.
- With the help of companies and librarians whose expertise centers on the use of databases, general training planning is developed at the university, the announcement to all users and the realization of the training is assured through general training planning within the university.
- As part of the medical education courses at the Faculty of Medicine, students are given a course on medical librarianship. In this course, they are provided relevant information about the databases.
- At the beginning of each semester, our library presents new databases to our students.
- The database is continuously communicated with representatives of the company and the developments related to databases are followed.
After 2017 Library Databases Performed Visibility Activities and JoVE Activities
Since I started working at Bezmialem Vakif University, I have often been in contact with users in research activities until 2017 and I know their expectations from the library. With the experience I gained, through multiple meetings we had with my director, we initiated the below-mentioned work within the University. We continue the visibility activities that we realized until 2017 along with these studies.
Starting from 2017, we aimed to build strong collaborations with researchers through reference services provided via the library. The fundamental issue regarding cooperation is to include the library into the research and learning processes of students and to include them in their research, development and teaching processes designed for academics. In addition, as part of our revised work, individual communication with users and planning of the library to be visible through social activities that have been planned.
- The attendance of the library directorate to the meetings where research and development activities are discussed within the university, and to all administrative and academic meetings held during the educational period is strictly assured. The main purpose of these meetings is to make research and development activities at the national and international level as good as possible, to support academicians in this field, to train qualified personnel, to train researchers, and to determine the best method of education. Participation in these meetings strengthens the relations we have with academicians and the ties between the university management and the Library. In these meetings, many issues related to Library services come up.
- By participating in the training sessions organized by academicians, database systems that academicians can use in courses are explained. Our academicians, who provide health contact training, use visual tools in their classes quite a lot. Our lecturers are shown how to use JoVE, which is a peer-reviewed and academic database, in visual content that they have used in lectures, shown on the web page in these meetings and how to transfer videos to their presentations.
- By the year 2017, a different training strategy has been developed instead of the general curriculum and all of the library's training programs. Groups related to the university departments have been set up. Individual training was given to groups of less than 10 people. During the training, the JoVE videos constituted the main visual content of the academics and thus, constituted the most attractive database.
- When we became a JoVE subscriber, the issue of the withdrawal of the studies published in JoVE at our university, mentioned by Mr. İbrahim SELÇUK, the JoVE representative who visited our institution, was continuously invoked to the academicians in our university and the encouragement processes of our academicians who wanted to do this study were followed. As a result of long efforts, the publication
- processes of our academicians to JoVE were accepted and video shooting processes were completed. During all these processes our instructors were forcefully supported. Our publication, as a significant one of the studies added to JoVE, was announced within the university (via e-mail, the library web page, social media) and the encouragement for the other academicians was ensured.
- After 2017, all faculties at our university were contacted at the beginning of the semester and courses in research methods and techniques were enrolled in specific weeks. Students were provided with access to JoVE videos in the course in order to facilitate them to benefit from the research process.
- The representative of JoVE in Turkey, Mr. Ibrahim Selcuk, is among the representatives of database companies with whom we have the closest relations. By constantly communicating with us, sharing innovations of JoVE, he allows us to make regular announcements within the organization and to increase JoVE's usage statistics. In addition to the training given by our library within the university, we also contact Mr. İbrahim Selçuk once a year and we carry out general corporate training within the institution.
- In order to increase library visibility activities in 2018, a national symposium on Medical Librarianship was organized at our university. The symposium was attended by health personnel, academics, and librarians interested in the topic. JoVE by being a sponsor of the symposium had the opportunity both to open a stand and to make a presentation which would increase its network among the librarians in Turkey. Moreover, the academicians and all the researchers who attended the symposium had the opportunity to get information about JoVE and its training.
- During this year, the trial accesses to certain research fields that are not accessible for now, have been conducted and afterward, the statistics have been evaluated by Educational Commission.
- After all our revisions, we have organized user satisfaction surveys to evaluate their satisfaction rate. As a result of these surveys, we have received, especially about JoVE, positive feedback.