title: Delivering distance training to rural health care professionals.
abstract: This article reports on a project that delivers distance training to rural health care professionals. Traveling to provide training on information-seeking skills to rural health professionals is time consuming and costly. In addition to face-to-face training, the University of South Alabama Biomedical Library's SAMNet project seeks to deliver multimedia training to rural health care professionals. The project uses information technology to package training courses combining PowerPoint slides and video instructions. This article describes the rationale, training module design and development, and the information technology and software used in the project. Multimedia packaged distance training courses provide a practical alternative to on-site training for rural health care professionals. It enables librarians to provide training without traveling long distance, thus saving time and money. Additionally, rural health care professionals may access the modules at a time convenient to them and proceed at a pace suitable to their learning style.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Library, University of South Alabama, Mobile 36688, USA. jli@jaguar1.usouthal.edu
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Runderson
authors.forename: Judy F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Burnham
authors.forename: Geneva Bush
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Staggs
authors.forename: Justin C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.forename: Thomas L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Williams
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000458:organization & administration*; D000407:Alabama; D001113:Area Health Education Centers; D003200:Computer User Training; D019992:Databases as Topic; D004496:Education, Continuing / Q000379:methods*; D020375:Education, Distance / Q000379:methods*; D006755:Hospital Shared Services; D006780:Hospitals, Rural / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D007993:Libraries, Medical / Q000458:organization & administration*; D019212:Multimedia; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D012984:Software