RAC’s Information Guides – Tools for Learning and Doing
Looking for information and resources on a rural health or human services topic? The information guides from the Rural Assistance Center (RAC) could be just what you need. Information guides (http://www.raconline.org/info_guides/) are pages on the RAC web site dedicated to the rural aspects of over 70 specific health, human services, and other important topics. Each information guide is developed by one of RAC’s information specialists with the assistance of content experts from organizations such as local-level providers, national membership organizations or federal agencies. Information guides contain information and resources such as:
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Tools, such as web sites and online databases
- Funding opportunities
- Documents, such as publicly available reports, regulations, and government publications
- Organizations with interests in the topic
- News stories and upcoming events
- Terms and acronyms associated with the topic
- Searches and bibliographies
- Maps
- Success stories
- Contact information for experts in the field
Information guides can be used by people with various levels of knowledge about a topic and for a wide range of purposes.
Tools for Learning: RAC’s Information Guides are important tools for people who need to learn about new rural health and human service subjects. The overviews and Frequently Asked Questions on each guide help build a basic understanding of the topic, which can be built upon by accessing any of the other resources listed. For instance, one rural hospital administrator tells us that he uses RAC’s Critical Access Hospital Information Guide as a board orientation tool by asking each new board member to review the guide to learn about CAH status. Likewise, one State Office of Rural Health tells us that it uses the information guides to help new staff gain an understanding of numerous rural health issues.
Tools for Doing: Information guides can be very useful documents for people who have a more advanced understanding of the topics, as well. These people often come to the guides looking for specific information that will help them with a task such as writing a grant proposal or figuring out how a regulation will affect their organization. The information guides can help users identify resources such as maps, statistics, research findings and experts’ contact information which will help them to more successfully accomplish their tasks. The information and resources on the information guides have been reviewed and hand-picked by RAC’s information specialists to make sure that they are timely and from reliable sources – a definite advantage over using a search engine.
Information guides are living documents that are updated frequently as new information and resources become available. Subscribing to an information guide’s RSS feed will allow you to easily see what’s changing on the guide in real time. (For more information about RSS feeds, please see, http://www.raconline.org/rss/.)
Using RAC’s information guide pages can allow you to further your understanding of the topics and issues, in turn helping you to meet the needs of the communities you serve.
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