Ptolemy Project - Global

This project is based on the idea that health problems in developing countries are most likely to be solved by people working and living in those particular countries. The assumption is that these people know the right questions to ask in order to find practicable solutions. Access to medical literature, this line of reasoning continues, is central to this research process.

In an effort to provide access to full-text health information in and from developing countries, Ptolemy incorporates designated researcher partners from the developing world within its library community. Established clinicians (preferably surgeons or obstretricians/gynaecologists) who would not otherwise be able to afford access to literature become Research Affiliates of the OIS at the University of Toronto, and are thus included within the definition of the "University of Toronto Community". This enables the Library to provide these physicians with access to the full-text resources on the Ptolemy Library website.

In addition to fostering research by others, Ptolemy itself has a research component. Organisers monitor all "hits" made through the proxy server in order to collect data about the frequency of visits to various resources and thus to deduce the relative interest of different types of resources to participants. The hit-counting data is designed to better understand the usage patterns and health information requirements of developing countries as part of an effort to help develop policies that bridge the "digital divide". Qualitative data will also be collected from periodic surveys and spontaneous feedback from the participants. There will be an ongoing evaluation of the platform using information and ideas gleaned both from periodic surveys and from feedback obtained from the website.

Since the project's inception, there have been two surveys (April and August 2002) of Ptolemy participants. Since a special focus of the project is on addressing perceived shortfalls in surgical care in East Africa, these surveys have focussed on countries in that region (membership priority has also been given to members of The Association of Surgeons of East Africa). Click here for details on the findings of the August 2002 survey.

Health, Technology.

The project is named after Ptolemy I Sotor (367-283 B.C.), the general who built the great library in Alexandria that housed the written corpus of the ancient African, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern worlds.

The University of Toronto Library System is the largest academic library in Canada and is the third largest among research libraries in North America. The system consists of over 30 libraries. In addition to more than 13 million holdings, these libraries provide access to 14,000 full-text electronic journals, 450 indexes and abstracts, 200 online newspapers, and 6,000 electronic books. Library resources also include evidence-based medical sites and a variety of search engines.