State of the art of expert searching: results of a Medical Library Association survey.

OBJECTIVES: Medical Library Association (MLA) members were surveyed to gather background about the current state of expert searching in institutions. The survey results were intended to guide the recommendations of the Task Force on Expert Searching for promoting the importance of expert searching and implementing those recommendations. METHODS: MLA members were surveyed, and data obtained from the survey were compiled and analyzed to answer three general questions: what is the perceived value of searching skills to the institution, how do health sciences librarians maintain and improve their searching skills, and how are searching services promoted and/or mandated in the institution. RESULTS: There were 256 responses to the survey. Over 95% of the respondents saw their expert-searching skills were of value to their institutions, primarily through performing mediated searches and search consultations. Over 83% of the respondents believed that their searching skills had improved over the past 10 years. Most indicated that continued training was very important in maintaining and improving their skills. Respondents promoted searching services most frequently through orientations, brochures, and the libraries' Web pages. No respondent's institution mandated expert searching. Less than 2% of respondents' institutions had best practice guidelines related to expert searching, and only about 8% had guidelines or policies that identified situations where expert searching was recommended. CONCLUSIONS: The survey supports the belief that health sciences librarians still play a valuable role in searching, particularly in answering questions about treatment options and in providing education. It also highlights the need for more expert searching courses. There has been minimal discussion about the perceived need for expert-searching guidelines in the institutions represented by survey respondents.     

Imperatives for continuing research education: results of a Medical Library Association survey.

This paper reports the results of a survey assessing the interest of Medical Library Association (MLA) members in acquiring or improving research skills through continuing education (CE). It describes respondents' educational preparation for research and selected research activities, reviews MLA's experiences with offering CE courses on research topics, and discusses MLA's role in providing education to prepare members for research. The paper includes recommendations for improving research skills through CE and other professional activities. Topics of greatest interest to MLA members were survey development, problem identification, evaluation and cost studies, survey methodology, and methods of data collection. Many respondents preferred local courses. Academic health sciences librarians, as a group, were found to be more productive publishers than hospital librarians. Many respondents reported the availability of free or subsidized research-support services, but more than half did not. More than 90% of respondents indicated that MLA should actively encourage, require, or offer research education. A comprehensive plan for obtaining research skills through CE, along with individual self-assessment and counseling, is recommended.     

Academic librarian's transition to blended librarianship: a phenomenology of selected academic librarians in Zimbabwe

This paper explores the shared experiences of practices of blended librarianship among Zimbabwean academic librarians to identify how adequately they comply with their dynamic roles and functions. The paper relies on the theoretical constructs from Bell and Shank's (2004, 2007) blended librarianship and Lave and Wenger's (1991) Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) to understand how Zimbabwean academic librarians practice blended librarianship in the workplace through engagement in legitimate work tasks. The investigators used phenomenology to explore academic librarians' experiences of blended librarianship. They selected a sample of 101 academic librarians and delivered a semi-structured questionnaire to the sample, conducted document research and interviewed key informants from the sample. The researchers collected data from the Bindura University of Science Education, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Lupane State University, Midlands State University, the National University of Science and Technology, and PHSBL80 Library which chose to be undisclosed. Each institution adopted blended librarianship in its way. Four (4) different categories of blended librarianship emerged from the experiences; that is “transcending blended librarians”, “partially blended librarians”, “intermittent blended librarians” and “aspiring blended librarians”, displaying each institution's level of instructional technology and instructional design roles. The study proposes that the “Academic librarian's transition to blended librarianship” two-by-two matrix that developed was in this inquiry needs further refinement. Further enquiries may test the matrix within the same sites or other locales altogether to corroborate if the results are replicable.     

Our words,our story: a textual analysis of articles published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association/Journal of the Medical Library Association from 1961 to 2010

Purpose:

This lecture explores changes in the medical library profession over the last fifty years, as revealed by individual word usage in a body of literature.

Methods:

I downloaded articles published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association and Journal of the Medical Library Association between 1961 and 2000 to create an electronic corpus and tracked annual frequency of individual word usage. I used frequency sparklines of words, matching one of four archetypal shapes (level, rise, fall, and rise-and-fall) to identify significant words.

Results:

Most significant words fell into the categories of environment, management, technology, and research. Based on word usage changes, the following trends are revealed: Compared to 1961, today''s medical librarians are more concerned with digital information, not physical packages. We prefer information to be evidence-based. We focus more on health than medicine. We are reaching out to new constituents, sometimes leaving our building to do so. Teaching has become important for us. We run our libraries more like businesses, using constantly changing technology. We are publishing more research articles.

Conclusions:

Although these words were chosen by individual authors to tell their particular stories, in the aggregate, our words reveal our story of change in our profession.The Janet Doe Lecture on the history or philosophy of medical librarianship: I will warn you right now that you will get very little philosophy out of me today, for two reasons. First, my predecessor T. Scott Plutchak, AHIP, was a philosophy major, and I knew that a zoology major like myself could not compete with that. Second, “philosophy” in many Janet Doe lectures is actually a strong personal viewpoint of medical librarianship—what it is or what it should be. I do collection development, where things change so much and so rapidly that I have not had time to develop a strong viewpoint like many of my Doe predecessors. Like most of my collection development colleagues, I''m just trying to survive day to day. That tends to create a very pragmatic attitude. If I believe in anything strongly, it is that I believe I''ll have another cookie.Without philosophy, I am left with history. And here I will echo the complaint of many Doe lecturers by stating that I have a severe lack of historical research skills. I became painfully aware of this lack as I read previous Doe Lectures, such as David Kronick''s 1980 lecture 1. Kronick was a true scholar, with a doctorate in librarianship. We honor him to this day with the Medical Library Association''s (MLA''s) David A. Kronick Traveling Fellowship. In his Doe Lecture, Kronick quoted H. Curtis Wright''s “The Oral Antecedents of Greek Librarianship,” Francis Bacon, and the fifteenth-century Abbot Johannes Trimethius. In contrast, later in this speech, I will quote the Talking Heads.While I am totally unqualified for traditional historical research, that still leaves informal, or personal, history. Although I am old enough to be in my anecdotage, I just do not have many interesting stories to tell. And as Thomas Basler, FMLA, told us in his 2008 Doe Lecture, there are no more giants. While I met some of those giants, I did not know them, and I certainly do not have any stories to tell about them. I suppose I could tell stories about some of the taller than average individuals I have met in my career, but that does not sound very exciting.     

Expert searching in health librarianship: a literature review to identify international issues and Australian concerns

Background: The traditional role of health librarians as expert searchers is under challenge. Objectives: The purpose of this review is to establish health librarians’ views, practices and educational processes on expert searching. Methods: The search strategy was developed in LISTA and then customised for ten other databases: ALISA, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. The search terms were (expert search* OR expert retriev* OR mediated search* OR information retriev*) AND librar*. The searches, completed in December 2010 and repeated in May 2011, were limited to English language publications from 2000 to 2011 (unless seminal works). Results: Expert searching remains a key role for health librarians, especially for those supporting systematic reviews or employed as clinical librarians answering clinical questions. Conclusions: Although clients tend to be satisfied with searches carried out for them, improvements are required to effectively position the profession. Evidence‐based guidelines, adherence to transparent standards, review of entry‐level education requirements and a commitment to accredited, rigorous, ongoing professional development will ensure best practice.     

Attitudes to LIS education and academic–practitioner liaison: results of a survey of members of the Library Association Health Libraries Group

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International trends in health science librarianship Part 9: the UK – Scotland and Wales

This is the 9th in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship. The previous article in this series looked at Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In this issue the focus is Scotland and Wales. There will be three or four more articles this year tracking trends in the Far East, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. JM     

Health sciences librarians' awareness and assessment of the Medical Library Association Code of Ethics for Health Sciences Librarianship: the results of a membership survey

Objective:

The Medical Library Association (MLA) Board of Directors and president charged an Ethical Awareness Task Force and recommended a survey to determine MLA members'' awareness of and opinions about the current Code of Ethics for Health Sciences Librarianship.

Methods:

The task force and MLA staff crafted a survey to determine: (1) awareness of the MLA code and its provisions, (2) use of the MLA code to resolve professional ethical issues, (3) consultation of other ethical codes or guides, (4) views regarding the relative importance of the eleven MLA code statements, (5) challenges experienced in following any MLA code provisions, and (6) ethical problems not clearly addressed by the code.

Results:

Over 500 members responded (similar to previous MLA surveys), and while most were aware of the code, over 30% could not remember when they had last read or thought about it, and nearly half had also referred to other codes or guidelines. The large majority thought that: (1) all code statements were equally important, (2) none were particularly difficult or challenging to follow, and (3) the code covered every ethical challenge encountered in their professional work.

Implications:

Comments provided by respondents who disagreed with the majority views suggest that the MLA code could usefully include a supplementary guide with practical advice on how to reason through a number of ethically challenging situations that are typically encountered by health sciences librarians.