Barriers When Advocating or Providing Information Literacy Instruction in Medical Institutions of Pakistan

Abstract

This study aims to identify the factors which hinder the implementation of IL instructions programmes or prevent their systematic development in Pakistani medical institutions. This study adopted a two-phase, sequential mixed method research design. In first phase, head librarians of all (114) academic medical institutions in Pakistan were surveyed. Response rate was 61.5 %. In second phase, 20 purposively selected head librarians were interviewed. There was a consensus between the head librarians employed at public and private sector medical institutions that out of 12 barriers identified in this study, "lack of training opportunities for IL instruction for librarians" and "lack of policy regarding IL instruction in the medical institutions" were the two most significant barriers to IL instruction programmes in medical institutions. These findings suggest future direction for pre- and in-service education of librarians to prepare themselves to provide IL instruction. A clearly stipulated IL policy may be formulated and implemented in all medical institutions. The findings of this study are expected to enable medical librarians to be more aware of the barriers while planning and providing IL instruction in medical institutions.