Diffusion While Mobile

PDAs are an extremely useful tool for diffusing information for the health care clinician always being on the go. Being lightweight and portable, this reference tool provides evidence-based practice references at the point of care. Collaboration of librarians with health care professionals is important. Technical support for faculty and students is required. Librarians need to find those super users to encourage the concept of the PDA as a reference tool. Faculty need to provide role modeling and also promote its use in assignments with the students. Predictable access if using the main campus library for loading, resynching, troubleshooting, and updating the PDAs and their databases is needed (Scollin, Callahan, Mehta, & Garcia, 2006).
Other services that need to be offered are: demonstrations and workshops. Be cautioned though that there area wide variety of skills in this type of educational delivery. Medicine appears to be the forerunner in using PDAs with dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing following. What is being accessed is drug databases, reference books, patient care, and in some cases patient tracking as well. The library can be helpful in disseminating what resources are available for PDAs and how to use them. Clearly, PDAs are not being used to their potential.

Librarians role in dissemination can focus on:
Product and purchasing information
Loaner services
Fairs with computer vendors
Links for the particular health care discipline
Demonstrations in using the PDA
Workshops to focus on increasing skill levels

Bottom line by librarians is pro-activity in providing consistent and knowledgeable support (De Groote & Doranski, 2004).

Supplying Content Via PDA
Webclipper software is available for downloading web content when not connected to the Internet. Examples of both free and pay for service are: AvantGo, Plucker, SunRise XP, iSilo, Namo HandStory, or RepliGo – this works on both PDAs and pocket PCs RSS links may be provided as well. (Cuddyy, 2006).

Examples of Health Science Libraries with PDA Support

Drexel University Health Sciences Library - http://www.library.drexel.edu/resources/guides/healthpda.html
Duke University Medical Center Library - http://www.mclibrary.duke.edu/training/pda
Loyola University, Health Sciences Library - http://library.luhs.org/wwwlinks/pdas11-21-04.htm
University of California, Irvine, Grunigen Medical Library - http://grunigen.lib.uci.edu/pda-resources.html
University of Connecticut Health Center, Lyman Maynard Stowe Library - http://library.uchc.edu/pda/
University of Pennsylvania - http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/biomed/updated_pda_resources.html
Yale University, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library - http://www.med.yale.edu/library/technology/PDA/PDAWiFi.html#iphone

Interesting ResourceWebsite: Libraries on the Go by Megan Fox, We and Electronic Resource Librarian, Simmons College Library (Revised 2007, November)- http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/pda/


References
Cuddy, C. (2006). How to serve content to PDA Users on-the-Go. Computers in Libraries, 26(4), 10-12, 14-15.

De Groote, S. L., & Doranski, M. (2004). The use of personal digital assistants in the health sciences: Results of a survey. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 92(3), 341-348.

Scollin, P., Callahan, J., Mehta, A., & Garcia, E. (2006). The PDA as a reference tool. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 24(4), 208-213.