Looking around to look ahead: A review of medical library online tutorials Purpose To identify and analyze online tutorials, which are freely available on medical libraries web sites, in order to plan the redesign of redesign of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Librarys instructional programs. Setting/subjects The web sites of 124 medical libraries in the U.S. were analyzed. The authors focused solely on libraries supporting the medical schools listed on the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) web site. Methodology Using a list of ten questions, the authors collected data from each site related to the online tutorials that the libraries linked to and the online tutorials they created. Information obtained about the online tutorials that the libraries created included the topics of the tutorials, the software that was used to create the tutorials, whether there were feedback surveys, if the tutorials were interactive, and more. The data was compiled in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis. Rozalynd McConnaughy, Allison LoCicero, Briget Livingston & Steven Wilson School of Medicine Library, University of South Carolina Results Overall, 63% of the libraries linked to tutorials that were created by vendors or other libraries, with the National Library of Medicine's PubMed tutorial being the most popular; 59% of the libraries created freely available tutorials (274 in all) with Evidence-Based Medicine being the most popular topic; HTML editors were the most commonly used applications to create these tutorials; nineteen tutorials were interactive; 10% included quizzes; and, 24% of the tutorials included surveys or other feedback options. Discussion/conclusion Although the majority of libraries observed are creating tutorials, most of the tutorials have a simple design that does not require responses from the user. Course-integrated tutorials and tutorials that are password-restricted possibly had a more sophisticated design. Based on our findings, the authors plan to create tutorials that encompass the features most libraries do not include, such as interactivity, quizzes, evaluations, and printable handouts. Most Popular Tutorials Tutorial TopicDesignerNumber of Libraries linking to the tutorial 1. PubMed National Library of Medicine65 2. Web of Science Thomson Scientific27 3. Refworks Refworks17 4. Ovid MEDLINE Ovid14 5. EBM Duke University & UNC at Chapel Hill13 6. Ovid MEDLINE Duke University11 7. UpToDate UpToDate10 8. Micromedex Thomson Scientific9 9. EBSCOhost EBSCO8 10. PubMed University of Florida7 11. CINAHL University of Florida6 12. SciFinder Scholar ACS6 13. Scopus Elsevier6 14. BLAST NCBI5 15. Current Contents Connect Thomson Scientific5 16. Science Direct Elsevier Toxicology Tutorials National Library of Medicine5 Questions 1. Does the library link to outside tutorials (created by vendors or other libraries)? 2. If yes, what are the topics/databases covered? 3.Does the library create freely available online tutorials? 4.If yes, what topics/databases are the focus of the tutorials? 5.What software was used to create the tutorial? 6.Are the tutorials interactive, requiring users to perform searches, etc.? Or are the participants passive, just reading content? 7 Is there a quiz or test in the tutorial? 8. Is there a survey at the end of the tutorial or are they requesting feedback some other way? 9. What are the target audiences for the tutorials? ( Any patron, med students, nursing students, faculty, etc.) 10. Are there any printable contents? (Copy of the tutorial? Handouts?) Topics of Tutorials Created by Library Software Used Did the Tutorial include a Quiz? Did the Tutorial include a survey or provide another feedback option? Was the Tutorial Interactive?