On Tuesday, October 3rd the library and a collaborative team (principally from the UNM-HSC Clinical & Translational Science Center and its Community Engagement & Research Core - CERC) held a Community Engagement Studio (CES) to learn about the unique needs of users accessing the library's Native Health Database.
What is a Community Engagement Studio, you might ask?
The Community Engagement Studio is a community-engaged consultative model developed in 2009 by the Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core at the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. A CES is a one-time consultative session with a researcher’s population of interest. Studios consist of a panel of community stakeholders (called experts), whose characteristics are defined by the researcher, to provide feedback to enhance the planning, design, implementation, translation, or dissemination of research. -Courtesy of UNM-HSC CTSC
Over the course of two hours via Zoom, assembled community experts met to tackle a key purpose: understand how users interact with the Native Health Database (NHD) and what they anticipate finding there. To grapple with this broad purpose, a few key questions were posed to the group:
- What were their experiences using the NHD? What was good and what could be improved?
- What were some of the reasons they came to the NHD?
- What types of resources would they anticipate finding? What does a trustworthy resource look like?
- How is the concept of Indigenous Data Sovereignty embedded into the user experience?
The CERC team functioned as both facilitator and notetaker for this important discussion. They deftly navigated from one question into the next, prompting each of the assembled experts to respond from their unique perspective as users of the database. Among the feedback received and suggestions made:
- Integrate tools for transparency around decision-making with resource selection
- Improve citation export functionality, particularly for users engaged in scoping/systematic reviews
- Include datasets, though with strictures in place to prevent unintended access to culturally sensitive information
- Enhance the look/feel of the home page and other top-level navigation options
- Offer more unique materials, such as oral histories and grey literature
The CERC team provided HSLIC with a much larger report that can be used for strategic planning purposes, including funding requests to help implement suggestions in a nimble, sustainable manner. The report will also be shared with the Native Health Database Advisory Council in that group's oversight (with HSLIC) of the resource.
Our deep appreciation to this project's funder, the Network of the National Library of Medicine's Region 4 (located at the University of Utah's Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, Cooperative Agreement Number UG4LM013732). Our continued thanks as well to the team at UNM-HSC CTSC's Community Engagement & Research Core, specifically Heidi Rishel Brakey, Lexie Roesch, Julia Martinez, and Donna Sedillo.