The librarian as research informationist: a case study

Question:

How can an embedded research informationist add value to the scientific output of research teams?

Setting:

The University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library is an academic health sciences library serving the clinical, educational, and research needs of the UCLA community.

Methods:

A grant from the National Library of Medicine funded a librarian to join a UCLA research team as an informationist. The informationist meets regularly with the research team and provides guidance related to data management, preservation, and other information-related issues.

Main Results:

Early results suggest that the informationist''s involvement has influenced the team''s data gathering, storage, and curation methods. The UCLA Library has also changed the librarian''s title to research informationist to reflect the new activities that she performs.

Conclusion:

The research informationist role provides an opportunity for librarians to become effective members of research teams and improve research output.     

The informationist: building evidence for an emerging health profession

Background:

To encourage evidence-based practice, an Annals of Internal Medicine editorial called for a new professional on clinical teams: an informationist trained in science or medicine as well as information science.

Objectives:

The study explored the effects of informationists on information behaviors of clinical research teams, specifically, frequency of seeking information for clinical or research decisions, range of resources consulted, perceptions about access to information, confidence in adequacy of literature searches, and effects on decision making and practice. It also explored perceptions about training and experience needed for successful informationists.

Methods:

Exploratory focus groups and key interviews were followed by baseline and follow-up surveys conducted with researchers and clinicians receiving the service. Survey data were analyzed with Pearson''s chi-square or Fisher''s exact test.

Results:

Comparing 2006 to 2004 survey responses, the researchers found that study participants reported: seeking answers to questions more frequently, spending more time seeking or using information, believing time was less of an obstacle to finding or using information, using more information resources, and feeling greater satisfaction with their ability to find answers. Participants'' opinions on informationists'' qualifications evolved to include both subject knowledge and information searching expertise.

Conclusion:

Over time, clinical research teams with informationists demonstrated changes in their information behaviors, and they valued an informationist''s subject matter expertise more.

Highlights

• Informationist involvement in traditional team activities—going on rounds and searching and critically evaluating the literature—increased over time.
• As the relationship between a clinical team and informationist developed, activities expanded to include projects such as development of wikis, databases, and websites.
• Clinical teams came to view subject knowledge as key to an informationist''s preparation; however, their expertise as information scientists was valued most highly.
• “Initiative,” approaching research staff in their workplace, was the one personal trait focus group participants agreed on as most desirable for an informationist.
• When first introduced to the concept, researchers cited customization of services to team needs as a major benefit.

Implications

• To assure a successful informationist program, libraries must be prepared to commit time and money.
• Whether informationists or not, librarians should be prepared to support users'' increased need for genetics and molecular biology information.

     

The Library's role and challenges in implementing an e-learning strategy: a case study from northern Australia

Background: The Northern Territory Department of Health and Families’ (DHF) Library supports education programs for all staff. DHF is implementing an elearning strategy, which may be viewed as a vehicle for coordinating the education function throughout the organisation. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore the concept of elearning in relation to the Library’s role in implementing an organisation‐wide elearning strategy. Methods: The main findings of a literature search about the effectiveness of elearning in health professionals’ education, and the responsibility and roles of health librarians in elearning are described. A case study approach is used to outline the current role and future opportunities and challenges for the Library. Discussion: The case study presents the organisation’s strategic planning context. Four areas of operational activity which build on the Library’s current educational activities are suggested: the integration of library resources ‘learning objects’ within a Learning Management System; developing online health information literacy training programs; establishing a physical and virtual ‘elearningLibrary/Centre’; developing collaborative partnerships, taking on new responsibilities in elearning development, and creating a new elearning librarian role. Conclusion: The study shows that the Library’s role is fundamental to developing the organisation’s elearning capacity and implementing an organisation‐wide elearning strategy.     

Bringing evidence to practice: a team approach to teaching skills required for an informationist role in evidence-based clinical and public health practice

Objective: The objectives were (1) to develop an academic, graduate-level course designed for information professionals seeking to bring evidence to clinical medicine and public health practice and to address, in the course approach, the “real-world” time constraints of these domains and (2) to further specify and realize identified elements of the “informationist” concept.Setting: The course took place at the Division of Health Sciences Informatics, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University.Participants: A multidisciplinary faculty, selected for their expertise in the course core competencies, and three students, two post-graduate National Library of Medicine (NLM) informationist fellows and one NLM second-year associate, participated in the research.Intervention: A 1.5-credit, graduate-level course, “Informationist Seminar: Bringing the Evidence to Practice,” was offered in October to December 2006. In this team-taught course, a series of lectures by course faculty and panel discussions involving outside experts were combined with in-class discussion, homework exercises, and a major project that involved choosing and answering, in both oral and written form, a real-world question based on a case scenario in clinical or public health practice.Conclusion: This course represents an approach that could be replicated in other academic health centers with similar pools of expertise. Ongoing journal clubs that reiterate the question-and-answer process with new questions derived from clinical and public health practice and incorporate peer review and faculty mentoring would reinforce the skills acquired in the seminar.

Highlights

• Interdisciplinary faculty designed and offered a graduate-level course to teach the skills required by an informationist in clinical and public health practice, further elaborating a model for preparing informationists.

Implications

• This scalable approach to teaching skills for the transfer of evidence into practice could be replicated in academic health centers with similar pools of expertise; such replication could contribute data toward validating this training approach.
• Greater clarity on an appropriate, or “good enough,” standard of evidence for supporting point-of-action decision making is needed.
• Based on the assumption that practicing skills increases confidence and the likelihood that skills will be applied, this course included mentored practice of oral and written evidence presentation skills. Further research could determine whether a course that includes such mentored practice increases the likelihood that students will apply their newly acquired skills.

     

The Story of a Shared Last Copy Repository in Australia: The CARM Centre Stage 2 Development

The CARM (CAVAL Archive and Research Materials) Centre was developed in the nineteen-nineties by CAVAL, a not-for-profit cooperative owned by a group of university libraries in Victoria, Australia. The Centre was developed as a shared last copy repository for low-use published materials and, as it filled, a market assessment of demand was commissioned. This article describes how a new business model was developed and implemented for the construction of Stage 2 (CARM2). It also outlines lessons learned from the management of the original facility, ongoing issues associated with ownership and governance and trends away from the shared collection model.     

澳大利亚的现代化图书馆事业

本文从澳大利亚图书馆事业的环境、图书馆的自动化应用、读者服务工作、创收等四个方面介绍了澳大利亚的现代化图书馆事业。其中主要介绍了澳政府对图书馆事业的政策，市民对图书馆的依赖和支持，图书馆工作者对事业的追求和敬业精神；还介绍了澳大利亚图书馆的计算机网络化建设、光盘技术、多媒体技术的应用及各种先进设施的应用；并介绍了澳图书馆对读者的无偿服务和有偿服务及图书馆的创收活动对推进图书馆业务工作的发展等情况     

构建北京地区高校科技查新机构联合体的可行性探讨

本文分析了高校查新机构普遍存在的问题,并从查新资源共享、人力资源共享、网络服务平台的建设等方面对构建北京市高校查新机构联合体、构建联合体查新业务网络服务平台的可行性进行了探讨。     

Universal service in a participatory democracy: A perspective from Australia

This article places universal service policy in telecommunications in Australia in an historical context. Given the dynamic growth in information technologies, universal service should be reconceptualized within a knowledge-based discourse critically linked to considerations for deepening participatory democracy. As a consequence of the discussion this article recommends that funding universal service obligations in telecommunications be based on the preferred notion of a maximally open democratic debate. The universal service obligation in telecommunications should be funded from consolidated revenue with its parameters set by democratic debate.     

National Narratives: Australia in Asia

Magill magazine was an influential current affairs magazine which was first published in Dublin in October 1977. The magazine was owned by journalist Vincent Browne, who was also its first editor. Having worked in Belfast in the early 1970s Browne saw the conflict in Northern Ireland as one of the main concerns of the news agenda. This article examines Magill's coverage of Northern Ireland which was largely driven by an interest in exploring thinking within the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The magazine's coverage was comprehensive but narrow. Exclusive interviews with republican paramilitaries, who were banned from the broadcast airwaves, were a regular feature as was an interest in hard-line unionist leader, Rev. Ian Paisley. The magazine's journalism in this period has proven to be a valuable historical record of the emergence of the Irish peace process.     

澳大利亚的图书馆自动化网络、数据库和情报服务

澳大利亚的图书馆自动化网络、数据库和情报服务何洋Ａｂｓｔｒａｃｔ：Ｉｎｔｈｅ１９６０ｓ，Ａｕｓｔｒａｌｉａｔｏｏｋｈｅｒｆｉｒｓｔｓｔｅｐｏｆｌｉｂｒａｒｙａｕｔｏｍａｔｉｏｎ．ＴｈｅＦｅｄｅｒａｌＧｏｖｅｒｎｍｅｎｔｇａｖｅａｎｏｆｆｉｃｉａｌａｐ...     

Reforms to counter a culture of secrecy: Open government in Australia

Governments for most of recorded history have surrounded their information and decision-making with a culture of secrecy. By the latter half of the 20th century western liberal democracies, driven by right-to-know movements, slowly moved away from secrecy towards more openness of government through public access to its information. Australia, with a series of reforms beginning in the late 1970s, declared in 2010 that government information was a national resource, and public access was the default position. This paper, by providing a history of the Australian Commonwealth legislative and regulatory reforms, their impetus and interpretations, explores the ebb and flow of openness and the intended and sometimes unintended, consequences for traditional government secrecy. Using the complete freedom of information datasets made available by these reforms, the paper presents an insight into government attitudes to openness by providing access to its information. These datasets also enable research into government and bureaucratic actions to pushback against these reforms for pragmatic or ideological reasons. The paper concludes that although there continues to be worrying vestiges of secrecy, on balance, Australia has achieved much in countering a culture of secrecy and the delivering more openness of government.     

“创意”澳大利亚研究

近年来,强调创意文化逐渐成为澳大利亚文化发展的重要特点之一,澳大利亚政府对发展文化创意产业的支持、对艺术家和创意工作者的资助、在文化教育中鼓励学生培养创新能力、在文化外交和文化出口方面重视创意文化输出等多个方面的做法,都体现了澳政府对于发展创意文化的重视和力度。     

The Motivations of Book Publishers in Germany and Australia: An Empirical Comparison

Our study compares the motivations of Australian and German book publishers. The results demonstrate remarkable similarities, but also a significant difference regarding the effects of the publishers’ self-concept. In the German case the publishers with a dominant economic orientation are more proactive than the publishers with a dominant cultural orientation. In the Australian case, this correlation does not exist. The same difference holds for the relationship between the economic orientation and extrinsic motivation. We discuss these results and examine empirical evidence and theoretical suggestions to explain the differing findings. The data stem from surveys conducted in the two countries with responses of 196 (Germany) and 54 publishers (Australia).     

The accuracy of references in PhD theses: a case study

Background

Inaccurate references and citations cause confusion, distrust in the accuracy of a report, waste of time and unnecessary financial charges for libraries, information centres and researchers.

Objectives

The aim of the study was to establish the accuracy of article references in PhD theses from the Tehran and Tabriz Universities of Medical Sciences and their compliance with the Vancouver style.

Methods

We analysed 357 article references in the Tehran and 347 in the Tabriz. Six bibliographic elements were assessed: authors' names, article title, journal title, publication year, volume and page range. Referencing errors were divided into major and minor.

Results

Sixty two percent of references in the Tehran and 53% of those in the Tabriz were erroneous. In total, 164 references in the Tehran and 136 in the Tabriz were complete without error. Of 357 reference articles in the Tehran, 34 (9.8%) were in complete accordance with the Vancouver style, compared with none in the Tabriz. Accuracy of referencing did not differ significantly between the two groups, but compliance with the Vancouver style was significantly better in the Tehran.

Conclusions

The accuracy of referencing was not satisfactory in both groups, and students need to gain adequate instruction in appropriate referencing methods.     

科技期刊产业化初探

在阐述了科技期刊产业化的内涵之后 ,分析了科技期刊在知识传播体系中的优势 ,从提高科技期刊质量的角度重点讨论了以建立科技期刊在知识创新体系中的中心地位为主要内容的科技期刊产业化 ,提出当前我国科技期刊产业化过程的市场化和规模化问题及对策     

The feasibility of using document management software in the scholar's workstation

A study of the time to locate, acquire, and process articles for storage in a personal collection from conventional paper or electronic sources was conducted. Traditional paper methods of acquiring, indexing, and storing documents, it was found, take twice as long as electronic methods.