Intro
Trillium Health Partners (THP) is a multi-site hospital in the Toronto area serving over one million residents.
The system is supported by a medical library with two physical locations as well as a suite of online resources. Antonia Giannarakos, the Senior Librarian at THP, leads a small, dedicated staff who support the clinicians, students and researchers with their learning, medical practices and research.
To help make clinician access to library resources as seamless as possible, Antonia adopted the LibKey Nomad browser extension in 2023 and worked with the THP IT department to have it installed on computers throughout the hospital system. In order to provide patrons with even more robust service, the library added the “++” service to LibKey Nomad in 2024. Antonia spoke with Third Iron about the various ways the library is using it.
LibKey Nomad and the new “++” Features
The LibKey Nomad browser extension helps researchers who search sites like PubMed and Google to better understand when full text is available and then provide one-click access to it.
Over 1,800 libraries across 35 countries make LibKey Nomad available to their patrons and it is used by millions of researchers at hospitals, universities, corporations, and government research agencies.
New “++” features were released in January 2024. With them, libraries are able to customize the LibKey Nomad button by changing the color scheme and adding a logo, create and display messages on specific domains, enable researchers to easily export citations to their favorite bibliographic management tool, and integrate LibKey Nomad with chat services such as LibChat.
Custom branding for better library visibility
Antonia first made use of the branding feature. When people visit sites like PubMed and Science Direct, the LibKey Nomad button has been enhanced so the THP logo is prominently placed in order to highlight available resources and to instill confidence, so users know this is a service provided by THP.
“We like the branding. Using our own logo really puts a stamp on the service as our staff instantly recognize our logo. It’s confirmation that they can get content directly via the THP library. It really helps draw people’s eye to the application,” Antonia said.
Branding is a widely used feature that helps students, medical staff, professors and others at academic and medical libraries both trust the service and instantly recognize that there is a direct method to get the resources they are seeking.
Antonia thinks that it helps increase awareness of library services. “I believe it’s made a significant impact on raising awareness of the library and its resources ensuring our content is at the forefront so when staff need access, they can get to the full text. And if they can’t, then they can easily reach out to the library,” Antonia said.
Extend the reach of library services with domain messaging
One of the primary ways THP uses Nomad++ is to display custom messages that communicate helpful information to staff and researchers on specific websites.
For example, LibKey Nomad++ can display a message like, “we’re working on it!” when a user visits a website that has a planned outage or unexpectedly goes down. The message is easily removed as soon as the situation is resolved.
They also use messaging as reminders, letting people know if they need to log in to access a particular resource, or when something has changed from what’s expected, to help avoid confusion or frustration.
“We think the messaging is a great way to redirect staff to our own resources and content, as well as letting them know of any access or navigation issues on certain websites. It’s a great way to add reminders or announcements. We weren’t able to do that before, especially on certain resource pages, but now that it’s in the browser, it’s right there, and very useful,” Antonia said.
When THP switched to the new EBSCO interface, they used messaging to guide and help users seeing the new interface for the first time. Antonia explained, “We used domain messaging to say, ‘EBSCO might look a little bit different since they have updated their platform. If you run into any issues, reach out to us for assistance.’ It was a very brief, straightforward notice, but helped people be aware in case they couldn’t find things because of the change.
They also put messages on Google as a domain specific message. As Antonia says, “Everybody goes to Google, it’s just a default for searching and browsing. So, we have a message that says, ‘Start your search with the THP library.’ And then we have a link back to our homepage. It’s just a reminder that we’re here.
They’ve also used the Nomad++ feature to exclude some subdomains, which prevents the Nomad button from appearing on subdomains like maps.google.com and mail.google.com, ensuring the message created for Google users does not appear for people using Gmail and Google Maps. The library has also added a unique message that appears on scholar.google.com which reminds people how to access linked full text.
“Messaging is a great way to redirect staff to our own resources and content, as well as letting them know of any access or navigation issues on certain websites.”
Antonia Giannarakos
SENIOR LIBRARIAN, TRILLIUM HEALTH PARTNERS
THP also uses messaging to guide users to their partnership with the University of Toronto for access to ebooks.
“Our book catalog is part of the university catalog, and as you can imagine it’s a very big catalog to be a part of. So even though our location is listed, it can be a little hidden. We got some feedback from staff saying that they were not able to access ebooks from the catalog so, we used a message to remind them that they needed to log in if working remotely to access ebooks. The message helped people navigate the process,” Antonia said.
Antonia and the library staff at THP have consistently found the messaging feature of Nomad++ to be useful in multiple ways. As she explained, “It’s a way to remind and direct staff which helps reduce frustration and access barriers. If we can reduce that in any way, that’s always useful making library resources easier to use for researchers and saving them time.”
Enable chat with patrons anywhere
The THP library staff uses the Nomad++ chat integration feature.
“We really like the integration with chat because we’ve had LibAnswers for a while, so we think that’s a great additional avenue to get people to interact with us when they’re browsing online for information and they have a question, it’s really valuable, being able to help people in the moment.”
THP uses the LibChat service, but LibKey Nomad++ also works with other chat services.
Improving the Value of Requests from Users
Antonia noted that LibKey Nomad++ has had the effect of both reducing and increasing requests to staff from users. There are fewer requests for items the user already has access to, but more requests for other content.
Ideally, if a library subscribes to a resource, the user should get to it every time they seek it. This doesn’t always happen for a variety of reasons, and when that’s the case the researcher often initiates a request to library staff. These requests, where the library has the resource, are often the result of some technical inefficiency or barrier or some other problem that prevented the delivery, even though librarians happily help the user in that situation.
Librarians using LibKey and Nomad++ consistently report a drop in the number of these requests. Researchers face fewer obstacles and requests to library staff are less often for things the library has available but which the researcher simply couldn’t reach. Instead, the requests are for more consequential researcher needs, requests that tend to directly affect research concerning patient care. Overall, this development makes for less frustrated and more efficient researchers, while library staff time is spent on more substantive questions and on fewer procedural ones.
“In many ways it’s alleviated a lot of those requests we would’ve gotten because staff would hit a pay wall while searching online. We also think it’s increased requests in some cases because now users automatically get a request form, whereas before they may not have ever come to us. We believe it’s beneficial either way. It reduces those requests we normally would’ve gotten that we now don’t because they get direct access to resources, but then it also increases usage to make sure that medical staff are getting what they need. In both cases it increases awareness of the library, our services and resources,” Antonia said.
“I believe it’s made a significant impact on raising awareness of the library and its resources ensuring our content is at the forefront so when staff need access, they can get to the full text.”
Antonia Giannarakos
SENIOR LIBRARIAN, TRILLIUM HEALTH PARTNERS
“Nomad is a way to remind and direct staff which helps reduce frustration and access barriers. That’s always useful making library resources easier to use for researchers and saving them time.”
Antonia Giannarakos
SENIOR LIBRARIAN, TRILLIUM HEALTH PARTNERS
Conclusion
Antonia feels that at THP they now have a comprehensive suite of tools to provide the best possible access and support for clinicians and staff.
“We have incorporated four valuable online applications that maximize people’s access. It’s great to have content, but if people have to go to multiple different platforms to find the content, that’s frustrating.
“When we got our Discovery layer, it increased efficiency over just having a link resolver.
“We found implementing our remote portal made it great for staff who don’t have time when they’re at work—if they’re going to school or doing some professional
development—they can access content after work or on the weekend. They don’t have issues with getting to the information they need remotely.
“And our chat service has been a big improvement. People are so used to this technology, and at THP they can directly text to chat as well.
“And now with Nomad++, which we integrated our chat service into, we finally have these four systems all working together, which is especially good when not on a Trillium Health Partners issued computer, or when outside the THP domain. The signposts and messaging, the branding, all help raise awareness and reduce frustration. It’s streamlined access, and made it easier to get to our content, and also to get in contact with library staff. All of this is happening now because of the Nomad plugin.”
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