After UMASS faculty and librarians noticed nursing students using and relying on traditional medical reference books, systems librarians Apurva Mehta and John Callahan and assistant professor Patrick Scollin decided to create a better way for student to access library resources and texts at the point of care.

The UMASS team applied for and received a grant for $18,000 and began a PDA loan program at the campus library. Students began to borrow and use the PDAs while on clinical rotations. The program is now in its second year and there are 35 PDAs for loan at both UMASS Lowell and Boston campus libraries. Five PDAs are held by professors instructing nursing clinical classes and 30 are available for loan to students at each library.

The PDAs have 17 Skyscape medical references , including Evidence Based Diagnosis, Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult, and Nurse's Pocket Guide: Diagnosis, Intervention, and Rationales.
UMASS chose Skyscape medical references for PDAs because of the patented smARTlink technology. The smARTlink system searches all other Skyscape applications on the PDA to cross reference the material and provide instant access to all information on that topic. (seems similar to federated searching for the PDA)

The program is popular with the nursing students and the registered nurses. It seems when the nursing students would show up on the floors with the PDAs the registered nurses would be intersted as well.