Jonathan D. Eldredge

Evidence-Based Librarianship

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the challenges of finding evidence needed to implement Evidence-Based Librarianship (EBL). Focusing first on database coverage for three health sciences librarianship journals, the article examines the information contents of different databases. Strategies are needed to search for relevant evidence in the library literature via these databases, and the problems associated with searching the grey literature of librarianship. Database coverage, plausible search strategies, and the grey literature of library science all pose challenges to finding the needed research evidence for practicing EBL. Health sciences librarians need to ensure that systems are designed that can track and provide access to needed research evidence to support Evidence-Based Librarianship (EBL).

Evidence‐based librarianship: the EBL process

Purpose – The paper seeks to describe the EBL process in sufficient detail that the readers can apply it to their own professional practice.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a narrative literature review.Findings – The EBL process can be summarized through its five steps: formulate a clearly defined, relevant, and answerable question; search for an answer in both the published and unpublished literature, plus any other authoritative resources, for the best available evidence; critically appraise the evidence; assess the relative value of expected benefits and costs of any decided upon action plan; and evaluate the effectiveness of the action plan.Originality/value – References for readers to pursue more in‐depth research into any particular step or a specific aspect of the EBL process are provided. The EBL process assists librarians in applying the best available evidence to answering the more important questions facing their practice, their institutions, and the profession. This e...

The librarian as tutor/facilitator in a problem‐based learning (PBL) curriculum

This article describes the experiences of a librarian in a tutor/facilitator role immersed within a mainstream problem‐based learning (PBL) curriculum at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. The role of tutor might be a suitable non‐traditional role for librarians. Tutoring turns out to be an entirely different role from traditional teaching. This tutor role requires practicing reciprocity, patience and commitment. This role has provided a profound understanding of the curriculum as it relates to library and informatics services, earned respect from non‐librarians, and prompted one to re‐think the integrated model of library instruction. Librarians willing to meet the challenges of tutoring can succeed in this non‐traditional role with the many associated benefits.

Defining the Medical Library Association research agenda: methodology and final results from a consensus process.

OBJECTIVE Using a group consensus methodology, the research sought to generate a list of the twelve to fifteen most important and answerable research questions in health sciences librarianship as part of a broader effort to implement the new Medical Library Association (MLA) research policy. METHODS The delphi method was used. The committee distributed a brief survey to all estimated 827 MLA leaders and 237 MLA Research Section members, requesting they submit what they considered to be the most important and answerable research questions facing the profession. The submitted questions were then subjected to 2 rounds of voting to produce a short list of top-ranked questions. RESULTS The survey produced 62 questions from 54 MLA leaders and MLA Research Section members, who responded from an estimated potential population of 1,064 targeted colleagues. These questions were considered by the process participants to be the most important and answerable research questions facing the profession. Through 2 rounds of voting, these 62 questions were reduced to the final 12 highest priority questions. CONCLUSION The modified delphi method accomplished its desired survey and consensus goals. Future survey and consensus processes will be revised to generate more initial questions and to distill a larger number of ranked prioritized research questions.

The new Medical Library Association research agenda: final results from a three-phase Delphi study

The Medical Library Association’s (MLA’s) 2007 research policy statement [1] charged the MLA Research Section with defining the MLA research agenda on a recurring basis [2]. In 2008, the MLA Research Section’s Research Agenda Committee used a group consensus technique known as the Delphi method that involved both researchers and leaders to articulate MLA’s twelve highest priority research questions. The MLA Board adopted these twelve questions as the 2008 MLA research agenda. A subsequent article reporting these top twelve questions includes detailed description of the committee’s research methodology [3]. Following several months of deliberation and in consultation with the MLA Board of Directors, the MLA Research Section’s Executive Committee directed the Research Agenda Committee to conduct a new study during 2011, implementing the adaptations recommended in the previous report [4], while upgrading the methodology to improve the answerability of the questions. Although only a few years had passed, it also seemed possible that rapid technological changes and emerging societal conditions would produce a different set of top-ranked research questions. These deliberations led to important changes from the 2008 Delphi study. The 2008 study had generated two questions that were so lengthy and sprawling in their subject coverage that they would have been nearly impossible to answer, requiring that the authors strictly enforce a sixty-word limit during 2011. While the 2008 study had merged the MLA leaders and all members of the MLA Research Section into a single study population, the authors decided against including all Research Section members during 2011, because Research Section membership might reflect support for the research endeavor or a desire to learn more about research rather than actual research experience. Those Research Section members with research experience would be difficult to identify easily. A year after the 2008 study, the authors coincidentally learned of a concurrent 2008 Delphi method process that a team of Swedish researchers implemented for defining the research agenda for all Swedish librarians [5]. The authors otherwise know of no other Delphi method studies on defining a research agenda in librarianship, although, as indicated in the 2008 study report [3], this method has been used by other professions to define their research agendas.

Student peer assessment in evidence-based medicine (EBM) searching skills training: an experiment.

BACKGROUND Student peer assessment (SPA) has been used intermittently in medical education for more than four decades, particularly in connection with skills training. SPA generally has not been rigorously tested, so medical educators have limited evidence about SPA effectiveness. METHODS EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Seventy-one first-year medical students were stratified by previous test scores into problem-based learning tutorial groups, and then these assigned groups were randomized further into intervention and control groups. All students received evidence-based medicine (EBM) training. Only the intervention group members received SPA training, practice with assessment rubrics, and then application of anonymous SPA to assignments submitted by other members of the intervention group. RESULTS Students in the intervention group had higher mean scores on the formative test with a potential maximum score of 49 points than did students in the control group, 45.7 and 43.5, respectively (P = 0.06). CONCLUSIONS SPA training and the application of these skills by the intervention group resulted in higher scores on formative tests compared to those in the control group, a difference approaching statistical significance. The extra effort expended by librarians, other personnel, and medical students must be factored into the decision to use SPA in any specific educational context. IMPLICATIONS SPA has not been rigorously tested, particularly in medical education. Future, similarly rigorous studies could further validate use of SPA so that librarians can optimally make use of limited contact time for information skills training in medical school curricula.

Virtual Peer Mentoring (VPM) Might Facilitate the Entire EBLIP Process

Implications for Practice • Virtual Peer Mentoring (VPM) is one possible means for maintaining one’s continuous professional vitality. • Mentoring relationships can thrive despite boundary crossings or multiple relationships provided both participants uphold ethical principles. • Virtual peer mentoring is a possible response to the short supply of high level professionals with time to mentor junior staff. Implications for Research • Professional associations must take the lead in identifying the most important and answerable questions facing our profession. • Where authoritative evidence does not exist for an informed decision a mentor may advise a protege on the potential for further research • Despite scarce research on Virtual Peer Mentoring, we can infer guidance from similar research on distance learning and collaborations.

Leveraging Change to Integrate Library and Informatics Competencies into a New CTSC Curriculum: A Program Evaluation

This program evaluation reports on the curricular development and integration of library, biomedical informatics, and scholarly communications (LBS) skills into a required informatics course for a new graduate degree program in the University of New Mexicos Clinical and Translational Sciences Center (CTSC). The course built on the opportunity presented by the new degree program to integrate LBS competencies rarely included in most traditional clinical research training programs. This report tracks the experiences and evaluations of two cohorts of graduate students who have completed the course. This article presents lessons learned on curricular integration and offers thoughts for future work.

The Latin American Social Medicine Database: a resource for epidemiology

Latin American social medicine (LASM) has become a widely respected and influential field of research, teaching and clinical practice, yet its accomplishments remain little known in the English-speaking and -reading world. Important publications have not been translated from Spanish and Portuguese into English, and the majority of LASM journals are not indexed in MEDLINE or similar bibliographic databases. The field’s development also suffers from technical difficulties of publication and distribution within Latin America. In LASM, a perspective emphasizing the social origins of illness and early death has focused on sources of these problems in relations of economic and political power. This orientation has contributed to the analysis of inequity in health and to alternative proposals for change. For instance, LASM analyses critically some of the dominant reform strategies in public health systems, offers proposals for alternative health policies and fosters research on the microand macro-political processes that affect health and health services. Likewise, LASM focuses on economic production in studies of the labour conditions that affect workers’ health. LASM uses theories and methods that distinguish its efforts from those of public health. In particular, LASM emphasizes the social and historical context of health problems, social determinants and the linkages between research and the development of responsive political ‘praxis’. In these ways, LASM offers innovative approaches to some of the most important problems of our age. Some Latin American medical and public health literature is indexed in Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe en Ciencias de Salud (LILACS, Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences), an Internet-accessible database maintained by the Latin American regional library of medicine in Brazil, Biblioteca Regional de Medicina (BIREME, Regional Library of Medicine). Although the LILACS database, supported by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), has improved access to the Latin American biomedical and public health literature, several features limit this database’s applicability to LASM. As examples, the LILACS database covers only about half of the key journals in LASM, does not include an abstract unless it appeared in the original publication, and usually does not provide translation of Spanish or Portuguese abstracts into English. This project’s overall objective is to develop and implement an Internet-based information system to maximize access to LASM literature and to facilitate continuing publication and distribution efforts in this important field. We have constructed the system to target investigators, educators, clinical practitioners, public health professionals, historians, social scientists, specialists in Latin American studies and professionals in library and information science. In particular, we have aimed to improve access to LASM for epidemiologists who focus on the social determinants of health outcomes. Although we have reported preliminary work on these efforts, this article provides an overview of the project as a whole and clarifies its relevance for epidemiology.

Do Clinical Librarians Matter? The First Randomized Controlled Trial in Librarianship

A review of: Marshall, Joanne Gard, and Victor R. Neufeld. “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Librarian Educational Participation in Clinical Settings.” Journal of Medical Education 56.5 (1981): 409-16. Objectives – To determine whether clinical librarian services cause healthcare providers to change their information seeking behaviors. To evaluate librarians’ educational roles for clinicians, patients, and patients’ families. Design – Randomized controlled trial. Setting – An academic, health-sciences-center, teaching hospital in Canada. Subjects – A total of eight teams, each consisting of at least eight members who represented at least three different types of health professionals. Four teams (rheumatology, obstetrics, neurology, and pediatrics) were randomized into the intervention group to receive clinical librarian services for a six-month period, and four teams (hematology, diabetic day care, pain clinic, and community psychiatry) were randomized into the control group that did not receive clinical librarian services. Methods – Two half-time clinical librarians attended the intervention groups’ rounds, clinics, and conferences identified as having educational components or where questions would likely arise related to patient care. The two clinical librarians handled 600 perceived or actual information requests, delivered 1,200 documents, and provided over 3,000 references during the twelve-month study period of September 1978 to August 1979. The typical service consisted of the clinical librarian securing one or two articles relevant to the question raised along with pertinent references placed in a “hot topics” ring binder located in the clinical wards. Healthcare providers were alerted to or reminded about the clinical librarian service through a brochure and an exhibit. The brochure also advertised the clinical librarian service to patients or their families. Approximately 24% of all information requests fielded by the clinical librarians originated from patients or their families. The remaining information requests originated from physicians (40%), allied health professionals (21%), and nurses (15%) belonging to these interdisciplinary intervention group teams. Main Results – Trained impartial interviewers conducted in-depth interviews with members of both the intervention group teams and the control group teams immediately following the first six-month study period and then again three months after the end of the study period. Following the initial six months of the study period, 67% of the members of the intervention group compared to 37% of the members of the study group used the library’s reference services. Three months after the study period had ended, 76% of the members of the intervention group compared to 49% of the members of the study group had used the reference services. The authors reported in a one-sentence page note that these findings were statistically significant beyond the .05 level as measured by chi-square and analysis of variance tests. Three months after the study period had ended, 60% of the members of the intervention group compared to 38% of the members of the study group reported rating highly the use of library resources. In addition, three months after the study period had ended, 36% of the members of the intervention group compared to 27% of the members of the study group reported rating highly the use of reference librarians. Although patients or their families were generally positive in rating the clinical librarians’ services, they proved to be a difficult population upon which to conduct a comprehensive follow-up evaluation study once patients had left the hospital. Conclusion – The authors conclude that the clinical librarian services to the four intervention groups had changed the group members’ information seeking behavior.