College health professionals and academic librarians: collaboration for student health.
College health professionals must find new ways of educating students on finding and evaluating consumer health information, specifically in the online environment. Librarians are trained as information professionals; however, librarians at general academic libraries are not taking a lead role in providing consumer health information.


OBJECTIVE
The authors' purpose in this research was to determine the health information resource needs of college and university students and provide a model for collaboration between college health professionals and academic librarians.


METHODS
The authors compared data from a national survey on college health (N = 54,111) with their own results from a survey of general academic librarians (N = 17) to create recommendations for synching students' reported health information needs with librarians' resources.


RESULTS
Although the Internet was students' second most-often consulted health information source, they ranked the believability of online health information above only television. In the librarian survey, although 12 respondents indicated that health information provision is a library's responsibility, the majority (n = 11) believed their library's consumer health outreach to be passive.


CONCLUSIONS
The authors offer recommendations for partnerships between college healthcare professionals and academic librarians to better provide this information to students.
Hallyburton
Ann
A
Department of Hunter Library, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723, USA. ahallyb@email.wcu.edu
Kolenbrander
Nancy
N
Robertson
Carolyn
C
D054626:Consumer Health Information / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D016245:Librarians; D013334:Students; D014495:Universities / Q000458:organization & administration*