Designing a Digital Library of Health Information Literacy Resources and Services to Serve Semi and Non Literate Populations: 

In this project we will develop methods to find and monitor resources and services on the WWW devoted to health information literacy.  The kinds of resources and services of interest are those devoted to serving the health information needs of the many non-literate and semi-literate populations. The initial phase of the project will be on specification of goals and on the design of resource and service finding strategies.  This will be followed by the design of special purpose web crawlers to expand the coverage of the library with additional focused materials.  The resources discovered will be tagged with appropriate metadata and added to a searchable digital collection.

Examples of key activities:  Designing search strategies; designing and applying metadata; deploying web crawlers; indexing the collection using Lucene; implementing a web interface to search the collection.

At least an initial digital collection of resources tagged with appropriate metadata.  The collection will be searchable through a web interface.

--Project Description provided by Professor Srinivasan.

This semester I am still working on the Health Info project with Professor Srinivasan, but under a new project description (above).  This semester the focus will be on adding to the resources provided in the Hesperian books, both by providing a greater context for various health issues already represented in the books as well as expanding the topical coverage. 

Goals/Schedule for the semester:

1. January/February:

• Complete the base prototype:

• Finish adding metadata to images
• discuss any new metadata that should be added (and add it)
• chunk the XML into sections sized pieces and add pointers to previous/next sections so that the prototype can be retrieved by Lucene in smaller bits

• Begin exploring standards for extending the digital library of health information:
• Open Content standards
• Explore how web crawlers will identify open content/multilingual health info/semi literate info
  
• Think about possible sources of high quality, easy to understand consumer health info on the web
• Consider how web resources will be integrated with existing prototype.
• Outreach/Research
• Apply for grant to do exploratory research abroad to gain input from intended audience
• Write paper for DOCAM conference (due March 1)
  

2. March

• Begin development/modification of web crawler to find multilingual health information for semi-literate populations on the web
• Complete human-read audio recording of two to three chapters of book
  
• Begin thinking about the metadata standards that will be used to catalogue found resources.
• Draft a letter that can be used to request permission for use of resources in the digital library (use of multimedia, storage of resource on local server)

• Prepare outreach and research activities
• Prepare presentation for DOCAM conference (presenting March 28)
  
• Continue developing research plans for possible pilot study abroad
• Apply for IRB approval of research and initiate contact with Mexican institutions
  

3. April/May

• Begin cataloguing/indexing and integrating found resources with existing digital library.
• Develop interface further
• Have a prototype ready for potential use in research study abroad:
• should include two more chapters of Hesperian books and corresponding human-read audio
• should integrate several complementary web resources
• should have a working interface

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