The academic librarian as co-investigator on an interprofessional primary research team: a case study

A pilot study of the effects of faculty status for medical librarians in the United States

Objectives:

Within many institutions, there are debates over whether medical librarians should be classified as faculty or professional staff, a distinction that may have considerable effect on the perception of librarians within their local institutions. This study is a pilot exploration of how faculty status may affect the professional experiences of academic medical librarians within their local institutions.

Methods:

Surveys were sent to 209 medical librarians listed as having some instructional function at Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredited medical institutions in the United States. Survey responses were captured using Qualtrics survey tool and analyzed for frequencies and associations using SPSS version 27.

Results:

Sixty-four medical librarians at academic medical institutions completed the survey developed for this study. Of the respondents, 60.9% indicated that librarians at their institution have faculty status, while 71.9% believe that librarians at their institution should have faculty status. Ninety percent of librarians with faculty status reported that they are expected to generate scholarly materials, compared to 28% of those without faculty status.

Conclusions:

Many medical libraries offer faculty status to librarians. While many medical librarians are active in instruction, research, and other activities normally associated with faculty status, it is not clear if faculty status impacts how librarians are perceived by other health care workers within their institutions.

Skills and key education needed for clinical librarians: an exploratory study from the librarians' perspectives

Background

A clinical librarian is a member of the medical team in many countries. To strengthen this new job, librarians need to acquire professional skills in order to provide information services to medical staff. In this study, we aimed to explor the skills required for the presence of a clinical librarian in the treatment team.

Methods

In this study, we sonducted a qualitative study in which 15 experienced librarians were interviewed in connection with information services. Also, a treatment team was involved in this study using purposive-convenience and snowball sampling methods. The data collection tool was a semi-structured interview that continued until the data was saturated; finally the data analysis was performed using thematic analysis.

Results

Out of the total interviews, 158 primary codes and, 107 main codes were extracted in 25 subclasses. After careful evaluation and integration of subclasses and classes, they were finally classified into 13 categories and four main themes, namely clinical librarian’s role, professional and specialized skills, communication skills, and training programs.

Conclusion

The results showed that specialized skills and training programs for the clinical librarian are defined based on his/her duties in the treatment team. We also defined the most important key skills for the clinical librarian in two categories of professional and communication skills such as specialized information search, content production, resource management, familiarity with various sources related to evidence-based medicine, teamwork, and effective communication. To acquire these skills, officials and policy-makers should develop and implement related educational programs at medical universities and colleges.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12911-021-01601-y.

Needs assessment for improving library support for dentistry researchers

Objective

To better support dentistry researchers in the ever-changing landscape of scholarly research, academic librarians need to redefine their roles and discover new ways to be involved at each stage of the research cycle. A needs assessment survey was conducted to evaluate faculty members' research support needs and allow a more targeted approach to the development of research services in an academic health sciences library.

Methods

The anonymous, web-based survey was distributed via email to full-time researchers at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto. The survey included twenty questions inquiring about researchers' needs and behaviors across three stages of the research cycle: funding and grant applications, publication and dissemination, and research impact assessment. Data were also collected on researchers' use of grey literature to identify whether current library efforts to support researchers should be improved in this area.

Results

Among library services, researchers considered support for funding and grant applications most valuable and grey literature support least valuable. Researcher engagement with open access publishing models was low, and few participants had self-archived their publications in the university's institutional repository. Participants reported low interest in altmetrics, and few used online tools to promote or share their research results.

Conclusions

Findings indicate that increased efforts should be made to promote and develop services for funding and grant applications. New services are needed to assist researchers in maximizing their research impact and to increase researcher awareness of the benefits of open access publishing models, self-archiving, and altmetrics.

Building capacity for librarian support and addressing collaboration challenges by formalizing library systematic review services

BACKGROUND

Many health sciences librarians are noticing an increase in demand for systematic review support. Developing a strategic approach to supporting systematic review activities can address commonly reported barriers and challenges including time factors, methodological issues, and supporting student-led projects.

CASE PRESENTATION

This case report describes how a health sciences library at a mid-sized university developed and implemented a structured and defined systematic review service in order to build capacity for increased librarian support and to maximize librarians' time and expertise. The process also revealed underlying collaboration challenges related to student-led systematic reviews and research quality concerns that needed to be addressed. The steps for developing a formal service included defining the librarian's role and a library service model, building librarian expertise, developing documentation to guide librarians and patrons, piloting and revising the service model, marketing and promoting the service, and evaluating service usage.

CONCLUSIONS

The two-tiered service model developed for advisory consultation and collaboration provides a framework for supporting systematic review activities that other libraries can adapt to meet their own needs. Librarian autonomy in deciding whether to collaborate on reviews based on defined and explicit considerations was crucial for maximizing librarians' time and expertise and for promoting higher quality research. Monitoring service usage will be imperative for managing existing and future librarian workload. These data and tracking of research outputs from librarian collaborations may also be used to advocate for new librarian positions.

Distinguishing case study as a research method from case reports as a publication type

The purpose of this editorial is to distinguish between case reports and case studies. In health, case reports are familiar ways of sharing events or efforts of intervening with single patients with previously unreported features. As a qualitative methodology, case study research encompasses a great deal more complexity than a typical case report and often incorporates multiple streams of data combined in creative ways. The depth and richness of case study description helps readers understand the case and whether findings might be applicable beyond that setting.

The new roles of medical librarians in medical research

Purpose

This study aims to highlight the role of librarians as an essential element in medical research. For this purpose, the primary research process was divided into three phases: before, during and after. Then, the roles of librarians associated with each phase were separated and the viewpoint of researchers and librarians on the importance of these roles were considered and compared.

Design/methodology/approach

This comparative, descriptive-causal research was conducted using the census method. Birjand University, a type-2 university in the field of Medical Sciences according to the rating of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, was selected for the study. The participants were all faculty members and all librarians working in the university’s libraries. The data collection tool was a questionnaire made by authors. Its validity was confirmed by four professors of Library Science, and questionnaire design expert and its reliability was confirmed with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.89. Data were analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, using descriptive statistics.

Findings

From the perspective of researchers, awareness-raising for open access resources, determination of standard subject keywords on the basis of Medical Subject Headings for articles and scientific texts and using scientific research findings as a basis for preventing duplicate studies in future research are the most important roles for librarians in the three stages of medical research. From the perspective of librarians, the use of knowledge management skills, searching scientific information as review of the literature and also selecting standard keywords to search the databases and providing health-care professionals with the findings of latest scientific research have the highest place in the different stages of the research lifecycle.

Originality/value

The difference between the viewpoints of librarians and researchers about the role of medical librarians at the various stages of the research lifecycle shows that there are significant gaps between the librarians’ services and users’ expectations. It is expected that through learning modern professional skills, medical librarians can assume new roles in medical research and make their capabilities known and available to researchers.

Inter-rater reliability of h-index scores calculated by Web of Science and Scopus for clinical epidemiology scientists

OBJECTIVE

We investigated the inter-rater reliability of Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus when calculating the h-index of 25 senior scientists in the Clinical Epidemiology Program of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Bibliometric information and the h-indices for the subjects were computed by four raters using the automatic calculators in WoS and Scopus. Correlation and agreement between ratings was assessed using Spearman's correlation coefficient and a Bland-Altman plot, respectively.

RESULTS

Data could not be gathered from Google Scholar due to feasibility constraints. The Spearman's rank correlation between the h-index of scientists calculated with WoS was 0.81 (95% CI 0.72-0.92) and with Scopus was 0.95 (95% CI 0.92-0.99). The Bland-Altman plot showed no significant rater bias in WoS and Scopus; however, the agreement between ratings is higher in Scopus compared to WoS.

CONCLUSION

Our results showed a stronger relationship and increased agreement between raters when calculating the h-index of a scientist using Scopus compared to WoS. The higher inter-rater reliability and simple user interface used in Scopus may render it the more effective database when calculating the h-index of senior scientists in epidemiology.

Health information practice: integrating, inspiring and innovating

The 2017 virtual issue of the Health Information and Libraries Journal (HILJ) is published to link to the 12th International Congress on Medical Librarianship and the 2017 EAHIL Workshop taking place in Dublin, Ireland on 12-16 June 2017. The conference title is Diversity in Practice: integrating, inspiring and innovative and it is exploring how health science librarianship, in all its diversity, is integrating, inspiring and innovating practice. These themes have been used to compile this virtual issue, which contains published articles selected from HILJ from the June 2014 issue through to September 2016. The virtual issue mirrors the format of a regular issue of HILJ, namely a review article, six original articles and our three regular features: 'Dissertations into Practice', 'International Perspectives and Initiatives' and 'Teaching and Learning in Action'. All articles included in this virtual issue are available free online.

Engaging in research: challenges and opportunities for health library and information professionals

This year's virtual issue (the 6th in the series) has been published to coincide with the European Association for Health Information and Libraries' (EAHIL) 2015 workshop (10-12 June, Edinburgh): Research-Minded: Understanding, Supporting, Conducting Research. This event is being run in collaboration with the International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists and the International Clinical Librarian Conference. Although research has always been a central part of any librarian's role, until recently health librarians and library users and funding bodies assumed that librarians were 'midwives' - there to assist students, clinicians, academics and managers set up and carry out their research. The notion of the librarian as a professional with a research agenda, who understands research methods, submits research grants, and publishes, is a relatively new perspective. If librarians are to take an evidence-based approach to their profession they need to acquire research skills. This is the rationale for the 2015 EAHIL workshop. To support the workshop, this virtual issue contains six original articles published in Health Information and Libraries Journal over the last 2 years that demonstrate the range of research activities carried out by health librarians, as well as a review article and articles from each of the three feature columns. All articles included in this virtual issue are available free online.