Carol S. Scherrer

Teaching EBM teachers: a team approach.

Abstract A collaborative Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) course, co-taught by medical and library faculty, targets the needs of health care and information professionals involved in teaching and practicing EBM by introducing concepts, methods and tools of the EBM process. The one-week course engages working teams of health care and information professionals in case-based activities to encourage participation in the learning process and the “Train the Trainer” approach of the course. The interdisciplinary partnership, both of teachers and learners, has led to a successful and effective educational program that accentuates the strengths and contributions of each group. Further research will determine whether this collaborative experience leads to ongoing partnerships between these professional groups in the clinical setting.

Evaluating a health sciences library residency program: what have we learned?

In difficult economic times, institutions must make decisions about their core values and where they should concentrate their limited resources. Survival of vital programs can take precedence over other programs that are recognized as valuable, but not essential. Funding for immediate needs can, and often does, preclude funding for future needs. Such was the issue facing the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) regarding its Academic Resident Librarian Program. Initiated in 1981 as a post-graduate appointment for librarians who were new to the profession and lacking librarianship experience, the program was suspended in 2007 for reevaluation and study. UIC has estimated that it costs the university approximately

Ruth Holst, AHIP, FMLA, Medical Library Association, 2010–2011

14,000 per resident for recruiting and training, in addition to their salaries. This study was designed to determine what the value of the program is to the former residents, whether the goals of the participants in the UIC Library of the Health Sciences (LHS) residency program matched or reflected those of UIC, and if UIC should continue investing in the program. A survey was designed to probe the initial motivation for those entering the residency, their satisfaction with the program, their greatest challenges, their biggest rewards, new skills they developed, their retention rate in health sciences librarianship, and the most and least valuable aspects of the program. The results provide insight for institutions considering establishing a similar residency or evaluating current programs. The responses also provide a view of the issues that new health sciences librarians face during the beginning years of their careers.

The evolving role of the librarian in evidence-based medicine.

Ruth Holst, AHIP, FMLA, has always reached for the heights, from age four, when she climbed to the top of the grain silo on her family farm, to being the first hospital librarian selected to deliver the prestigious Janet Doe Lecture, to being elected the Medical Library Association’s (MLA’s) 2010/11 president. Like a number of her predecessors as MLA president in the last ten years, Ruth grew up in a small rural town. The second of five children born to Wisconsin dairy farmers, Ruth is intelligent, funny, conscientious, and friendly and is the embodiment of Midwest common sense and warmth. A math major with a minor in library science from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee (UWM), Ruth always intended to be a teacher, like her mother. But when she graduated in 1970, there was a glut of teachers in Milwaukee, and on a whim, she applied for a nonprofessional position at Columbia Hospital in Milwaukee. Because she had a library science minor, she was offered a paraprofessional job in the hospital library, where she would spend the next thirty-two years and work under a total of thirteen supervisors. Three years after being hired, she earned a master’s of science in library science from UWM. In 1970, the library at Columbia Hospital held a reprint collection accumulated by Harry Beckman, who for twenty years had been editor of the Yearbook of Drug Therapy. The reprint collection had been used to help compile one of the popular ‘‘yearbook’’ series. Beckman was an important mentor to Ruth. He saw the need for the library to hold a core list of health sciences material, using a list published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He was followed by a second significant mentor, George C. Owen, who encouraged Ruth professionally, understood the importance of an effective hospital librarian, and increased her responsibilities in both the library and the hospital. Owen continued to update the reprint file until his retirement in 1981. Because the reprint collection was so popular with the staff physicians, Ruth continued to work with approximately twenty physicians to keep this quick reference service up to date until 1992. The 1970s were a time when health sciences librarians would often spend hours on only 1 literature search—3 hours per search was not unusual—and as a result, searching took up a good bit of the librarian’s time each week. As library services were increasingly used at Columbia Hospital, Ruth was able to hire more staff.