Discontinuing BioSites
For several reasons, BioSites is going to be discontinued. Users accessing BioSites will be directed elsewhere as described below. As many of you may know, BioSites was originally developed to be a central "clearinghouse" where librarians could submit evaluative information about high-quality biomedical Internet resources. The intended audience was to be the biomedical librarians who are involved in Internet collection development.
The factors that contributed to the decision to stop maintaining BioSites are:
- Very few new sites have been added by contributors, even with the streamlined submission process implemented in 2001.
- The feedback from the fall survey sent to BioSites contributors was mixed. Only a few contributors were enthusiastic about continuing BioSites, and others were ready to drop it. Contributors mentioned that they had created their own systems that were "oriented to their own clientele." While many said they would like to continue to contribute, only one actually did. The guilt factor appears to be strong- contributors like the idea of the web site, but have other priorities. Several mentioned specific reasons for the lack of contributions such as less staff, the work of managing the library's website, and the enormous amount of time required to maintain electronic journals.
- Looking at the topics that were searched on BioSites (dieting/weight-loss, Viagra, what is diabetes, pregnancy, cancer, anthrax), it seems clear that the searches are from consumers rather than librarians and/or health professionals. These searchers would be better served by a consumer-oriented service such as MEDLINEplus.
- Of the websites that point to BioSites, many are from academic health sciences libraries, and many are from international sources. In speaking with academic librarians, many have the BioSites link on their pages, but they didn't know who was using it, and they weren't referring people to it.
People who try to go to BioSites will be directed to a page that suggests MEDLINEplus or HealthWeb. HealthWeb is a collaborative project of the health sciences libraries of the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) and those of the Committee for Institutional Cooperation. It groups web sites by topic area, but it doesn't include the value added information that BioSites included.
UCSF, who has been hosting the BioSites web page, is going to archive the site for PSRML on a CDROM. Please contact Kay Deeney if you have any questions.