National Library of Medicine Website case Study by Marjani Alceus
key words “foodborne illnesses”
Overview: The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is a scientific, research, medicine, and medical information source designed for access by the general public. The site was mostly created for use by medical professionals, scientists, researchers, and technologists to understand and study biological nomenclature to assist the general public in Biotechnology improvements. The site boasts of the mission to “Understand nature’s mute but elegant language of living cells is the quest of modern molecular biology” (National Library of Medicine, 2022). The site is offered by the National Institute of Health for access to medical and scientific research that is peer reviewed and credible without limited use restricted to the general public.
User Profile: The user requested for their point of view on this assignment was my best friend whom we shall anonymously name AS. My selected user, AS, is an educator of science and mathematics within the K- 12 pipeline and holds a Master’s of Science in Education with specialization in elementary education. She holds great knowledge on scientific literature for provision to her students but had never utilized the National Library of Medicine prior to assisting me with this individual assignment. The level of navigation knowledge that she held was truly exceptional for a user that had never utilized the NLM site before
User Actions: Upon learning of the chosen site for experiment, A.S was amazed by the home screen after entering the URL to her browser. After viewing the home screen, A.S immediately knew to type in her chosen key words to the search bar which conveniently appears at the top fore front of the page directly below center of the website name. Following the input of the key words “foodborne illnesses” a page showing limiting parameters ranging from Literature to PubChem appeared to range the selected topics of interest. A.S chose to look into “Literature” since she has experience in scientific literature, A.S expressed amazement in the number of articles ( a number of 27,728) that showed near Literature, following the navigation to the number of articles under literature A.S skimmed the article names under Literature but grew disinterested and navigated back to the select topics to choose Genes -> Geo DATAsets. The visual steps shown below
Visual steps of the user’s site navigation
User comparison: The NLM site is one that I frequent for research while gaining my health information technology certificate and while conducting research within the Center for Translational Behavior Science. The user, A.S, described her slight frustration with the site where she was unable to find the filters to apply to the search but stated that the search process was very similar to the sites that she often used/ uses through education research. She described this site as a different experience from what she is accustomed to. I was very impressed with the great knowledge and ease of navigation that A.S displayed while on the NLM library site, she experienced no difficulties in finding a resource on the site. My experience with the site consists of limiting my search paraments to many biological nomenclatures and setting different filters to restrict the database to particular organisms/ species and getting the search down to a minimum of 10-20 scholarly journals published within the last ten years of research. The only obstacle AS questioned in trying to overcome was the inability to find where to filter the search results. I guided AS where to find the filters during my demonstration of how I as an expert of the site would navigate the site for research. I believe that the site might better support novice users through navigation steps or an easily shown embedded link that shows how to navigate the site properly with the use of filters and such for a more user-friendly experience.
Word count: 620
References
National Library of Medicine. (2022). Foodborne illnesses – GEO datasets – NCBI. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/?term=foodborne%20illnesses