This four-year project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health - National Library of Medicine (LM 02800), is examining and evaluating a new mode for improving the flow of health-related data and information in a community. HISP has (1) developed a prototype decentralized information sharing mechanism, and (2) empirically evaluated the process in terms of its benefits to the participating organizations as well as its potential problems. HISP networks are currently operating in Albany, N.Y., Binghamton, N.Y., and Syracuse, N.Y. HISP (a) identified categories of health planning and management information and data currently presumed to be available through informal communication, (b) determined their location, form and terms of use, (c) made this information available to health agencies and organizations in the form of a computerized resource directory, and (d) facilitated information utilization by the development of a network of interagency contact persons. A field experiment assessed the effectiveness of the decentralized system by a pre-test administered before HISP implementation followed by a post-test. The research on the prototype Health Information Sharing Project is being replicated by health science and medical libraries in two different communities: Albany, N.Y. and Binghamton, N.Y. The aim is to study the effect of the HISP network in different environments and to find new ways to strengthen the capacity of medical and health libraries in serving the interdisciplinary health community.