Academic Medical Library Research Articles

Determining COVID-19's impact on an academic medical library's literature search service.

At many institutions, literature search services are an important aspect of health science librarianship. This exploratory study analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the use of an academic hospital medical library's literature search service. To evaluate the pandemic's impact on literature searching at The University of Tennessee Medical Center's Preston Medical Library, data were analyzed for changes from the year before the pandemic (March 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020) to the first year during the pandemic (March 1st, 2020 to February 28, 2021). This was accomplished using LibWizard, a library feedback and assessment application, to review literature search data during the two periods. Variables of interest included total searches, purpose of searches, affiliation of the searcher, and searches with a pandemic-related research question. A 36.6% drop in literature search service usage was reported from the pre-pandemic year to the during-pandemic year. There was a 55.3% decrease in searches intended for research, as well as significant decreases in the number of searches requested by all patron affiliations. After March 2020, 10% of all searches concerned a COVID-related topic. The overall decrease in literature search requests, decrease in research searches, decrease in searches among all patron affiliations, and increase in searches on a COVID-related topic suggest that healthcare worker and institutional priorities changed during the pandemic. The results revealed research interests during the first year of the pandemic, as well as an overall change in library service functionality.

Rigor and reproducibility instruction in academic medical libraries.

Concerns over scientific reproducibility have grown in recent years, leading the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to require researchers to address these issues in research grant applications. Starting in 2020, training grants were required to provide a plan for educating trainees in rigor and reproducibility. Academic medical centers have responded with different solutions to fill this educational need. As experienced instructors with expertise in topics relating to reproducibility, librarians can play a prominent role in providing trainings, classes, and events to educate investigators and trainees, and bolstering reproducibility in their communities. This special report summarizes efforts at five institutions to provide education in reproducibility to biomedical and life sciences researchers. Our goal is to expand awareness of the range of approaches in providing reproducibility services in libraries. Reproducibility education by medical librarians can take many forms. These specific programs in reproducibility education build upon libraries' existing collaborations, with funder mandates providing a major impetus. Collaborator needs shaped the exact type of educational or other reproducibility support and combined with each library's strengths to yield a diversity of offerings based on capacity and interest. As demand for and complexity of reproducibility education increases due to new institutional and funder mandates, reproducibility education will merit special attention.

Conforming collections: assessing medical and allied health collections using Doody's Core Titles.

This study assessed the print collection of an Asian academic medical library using list-checking. The library's book collection was matched to Doody's Core Titles (DCT) subspecialties to identify strong and weak subject areas and understand temporal trends from 2014 to 2020. Basic sciences and nursing were the strongest subspecialties from 2018 to 2020, with many subjects having 100% matches, likely because most academic programs share the same basic sciences foundation subjects and nursing collections had been developed for many years as a long-standing program of the institution. Associated health-related disciplines was the weakest subspecialty. These subjects need to be prioritized in collection development. All subspecialties exhibited an increasing trend of matching between 2014 and 2020. Electronic books were included in the matching to DCT 2020; however, the match was low compared to print only or both print and electronic titles. DCT title matching can not only identify gaps in library collections that need to be filled but also point toward opportunities to develop strong and varied collections in medicine and allied health.

Patient Empowerment: A Partnership for Community Engagement in Three Phases

An academic medical center library and community outreach office partnered with community-based organizations and public libraries to deliver patient empowerment workshops within the community. The workshops included information on reliable sources for health information and how to engage your medical provider as a partner in improving your health. The initial project expanded to include the creation of professional development workshops for area public librarians. The final stage of the project was the redesign of the academic library’s website page to incorporate the community workshop content, including the creation of patient education videos.

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.

Telling lives in medicine: the impact of biography collections in medical education.

This article briefly discusses the value and impact of biography collections in medical education by illustrating the case of the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome (UCBM) Library. The UCBM Library collects, curates, and provides access to a special biography collection with the purpose of documenting the history of men and women who contributed in the field of medicine and related sciences. This article highlights the importance of academic medical libraries collecting biographical works in order to transmit knowledge and values in medical school curriculum.

Towards Academic Medical Library Standards in India: A Call for Action

With the rapidly growing healthcare information, medical librarians' roles and responsibilities in health care institutions are expanding, more so in the present context of Corona virus pandemic. Librarians in western countries are engaged in organizing, managing information resources, and offering seamless access to library materials to their users, supporting them with online consultation and research services. Medical libraries in India are slow to pick up the necessary momentum. They are underrepresented in medical education, their roles and responsibilities meagerly defined in institutions’ employment regulations and there is little in terms of medical library standards for India. Even the newly constituted National Medical Commission has not taken note of the role medical libraries can play going by its recently released 'Minimum Requirement for Annual MBBS Admissions Regulations 2020'. What should be minimum medical library standards, role of libraries in medical education in India? In order to answer these questions, the author reviewed: (i) higher education policy documents, inspection documents, UGC guidelines, and their coverage on libraries, (ii) standards developed by professional library associations, and (iii) publications on library standards in international journals. Medical education is a highly specialized area where serving librarians require a unique set of skills to meet the information needs of the diverse users of medical libraries. On reviewing these native documents, it was found that there is little content available for medical libraries to adopt in India. Therefore, to get a wider picture, library standards for higher education developed by professional library associations of the advanced countries were examined. Based on these, a model minimum standard for medical libraries in India is proposed. The right mix of resources, staff, funds, and infrastructure is important for the proper functioning of academic medical libraries in medical institutions. This will in turn enhance the quality of medical education, health care services, and research in the country.

The Ukrainian medical libraries network digital services development strategy

The relevance of the study. The digital revolution has had a significant effect on the functioning of libraries. Successful operation in the digital environment requires the improvement of the competitiveness of library services provided: libraries must be able to rethink their role, justify the value of their services for their own customers. Due to the increasing level of the Internet use among scientists, medical professionals, students, patients, community, medical libraries web-presence is of crucial importance. Websites serve as a digital gateway for library services and resources.
 The aim of the article is to study and present the current state of Ukrainian medical libraries service and to propose the digital services development strategy.
 The methodology. A content analysis was conducted over 21 Ukrainian and 5 foreign medical library websites. All data were collected within a month. Research data are presented in the form of tables and figures and analyzed using a simple method of percentages.
 The results. The findings show that many researched Ukrainian medical libraries are yet to exploit the full potential of the digital technologies in library service. The most common services: online public access catalog, virtual references services, identification UDC index, repository, electronic document delivery service (EDDS). Less than half (43%) of medical library sites in Ukraine are adapted to mobile devices. The most popular social media among medical libraries in Ukraine: Facebook (57%), Instagram (33%) and YouTube (29%). Over the last 5 years, libraries have become more active in offering web-based services and resources: plagiarism testing services, repositories, EDDS, virtual references services, identification UDC index. The main strategic objectives of the digital services development for medical libraries in Ukraine should be: increasing the web and social media presence, introducing mobile technologies, improving communication between the library and users, developing services to support research lifecycle, interdisciplinary partnership, support for information literacy of biomedical professionals and medical literacy of the community, developing competences of the medical librarians, corporate cooperation of the Ukrainian medical libraries system.
 The scientific topicality. The current state of Ukrainian medical libraries digital service was analyzed and compared with the state of five years ago and foreign academic medical libraries. Digital services development strategy was proposed.
 The practical significance. The study can be very interesting and important for medical librarians for upgrading, creation and support of relevant medical library services.

Information-Seeking Behaviors of Medical Faculty at a Qatar Academic Medical Institution

Medical faculty are among the most important user groups at any academic medical library. Knowing how medical faculty identify, access, and use information is important for collection development and instruction. This study found that medical faculty at an institution in Qatar identified information access and use as vital in their professional duties. However, they also noted limitations that warrant attention by the library to better serve this user group. Further, the results of this study were compared to a similar study of medical faculty in the United States, with noted similarities and differences in their access and use of information.

Academic Medical Libraries and Accessibility Challenges The Conformance of the Websites with the WCAG2 1

Website accessibility is a key factor in meeting individuals’ needs and expectations. Considering the lack of research on the accessibility of Iranian medical libraries’ websites, the aim of the present study is to evaluate the compliance of the central library websites of Iranian universities of medical sciences using the latest WCAG2.1 guideline. The research includes all the 51 homepages of the central libraries of Iranian medical universities. The accessibility evaluation of each homepage performed using “Webaccessibility” automated testing tool. The Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance was performed to explore the association of the compliance score of libraries’ websites among the three categories of medical universities. The findings of the present study revealed that none of the central library websites of the Iranian medical sciences universities are fully compliant with WCAG2.1, and the mean compliance score of accessibility was 77.26 ± 5.862 percent. The low accessibility of the library websites may result in making online information services and resources inaccessible and unusable to users who are disabled. Therefore, it is necessary for library managers and website designers to solve the accessibility problems and improve the accessibility of the websites to make them accessible for all users.

Confronting the opioid crisis with consumer health information: a look at East Tennessee.

Background:Starting in the 1990s, health care providers began prescribing opioids to patients as pain relievers, believing they were safe. However, many patients became addicted to these pills. In 2017, the US Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency to fight the opioid epidemic. This crisis was prevalent in East Tennessee, where many residents were prescribed opioids.Case Presentation:Librarians at an academic medical center library in East Tennessee analyzed the health information requests related to pain, mental health, and addiction over the last fifteen years. We reviewed the pattern of requests related to these topics, the counties requesting this information, and the impact that these hospital policies had on these requests.Conclusions:From 2005 to 2014, there were few requests about mental health, pain, and substance abuse. However, once the library moved into the hospital and there was an increase in awareness of opioid addiction, requests on those topics increased. Most of the requests were about pain, with the height occurring in 2017, during which year the public health emergency to fight the epidemic was declared. Additionally, 2017 was the year the hospital implemented visitor limitations for patients with infections associated with intravenous drug use, which might explain the drastic drop in substance abuse information requests in 2018. Future outreach will target counties that have a high opioid prescription rate.

Providing Information to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Response: Academic Medical Librarians’ Roles in Creating an Intelligence Report

In March 2020, the Dean of the George Washington (GW) University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) and the GW COVID-19 Incident Management Team asked the Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Public Health to initiate a daily report that surveyed COVID-19 literature/resources. This COVID-19 Intelligence Report would serve as a concise, authoritative source of COVID-19 information for clinicians, the Incident Management Team, and operational leaders. The Senior Associate Dean established an Intelligence Gathering Team comprised of clinicians and librarians. Himmelfarb librarians facilitated the collection, distribution, and archiving of COVID-19 resources and Intelligence Reports.

A cross-sectional survey on academic librarian involvement in evidence-based medicine instruction within undergraduate medical education programs in Canada

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to determine the range of involvement of Canadian academic medical librarians in teaching evidence-based medicine (EBM) within the undergraduate medical education (UME) curriculum. This study articulates the various roles that Canadian librarians play in teaching EBM within the UME curriculum, and also highlights their teaching practices. Methods: An electronic survey was distributed to a targeted sample of academic librarians currently involved in UME programs in Canadian medical schools. Results: 12 respondents (including one duplicate response) representing ten schools responded to this survey. 7 of 10 respondents were involved in EBM instruction, 3 of 10 institutions had a dedicated EBM course. Librarians were involved in a variety of roles, and often co-created and co-delivered content along with medical school faculty, and were present on course committees. They used a variety of educational strategies, incorporated active learning, as well as online modules. Discussion/Conclusion: The data highlighted the embedded nature of EBM instruction in undergraduate medical education programs in Canada. It also showed that librarians are involved in EBM instruction beyond the second step of EBM; acquiring or searching the literature.

Health sciences library leadership skills in an interprofessional landscape: a review and textual analysis.

Academic medical libraries sit at the crossroads of the complex landscape of the health sciences. Medical librarians in these environments must navigate and lead endeavors and services that involve many professions. In addition to being excellent leaders in their own professions, medical librarians must also improve their skills in leading in an interprofessional context by informing themselves of the qualities and skills valued in connected professions. In this project, the authors set out to understand leadership principles from three professions closely affiliated with medical librarianship to identify a core interdisciplinary leadership skill set. To do so, we conducted a mapping review of the existing literature from the last five years around leadership in academic medicine, academic nursing, hospital administration, and medical librarianship to identify core leadership skills across the disciplines and discover potential differences. We used text analysis and descriptive analysis to extract skills that were mentioned and uncover trends in the identified literature. Modern medical librarians must extend their leadership beyond the internal library setting, particularly as they become more involved with connecting and collaborating with leaders across disciplines. To successfully navigate such an interdisciplinary landscape and enhance the impact of the library in the broader organization, it is important to have the skills and vocabulary of leadership across the various professions.

Predatory Publishing and the Academic Librarian: Developing Tools to Make Decisions

Predatory publishing tactics are well-documented in the literature; however, the way in which academic librarians handle questions about these deceptive practices is not. A thorough review of the literature revealed a need for true decision-making tools that were easy to use and share. Based on this evidence, the authors developed Scholarly Tools Opposing Predatory Practices (STOPP) to empower librarians to make informed decisions by providing the appropriate context and tools for appraising journals, websites, conferences, and thesis converters. While geared toward academic medical librarians, these tools are built to evolve and adapt across disciplines as predatory practices evolve and adapt.

Medical academic libraries in Romania - breaking with the past and turning towards the future.

This article is part of a series in this regular feature which looks at new directions in health science libraries. This article provides an updated overview of medical libraries in Romania, with a focus on the academic libraries which function under the patronage of medical schools. Information was collected through a survey questionnaire sent out to Romanian academic medical libraries in March 2017. The responses provide an overall picture of the state of Romanian medical libraries, highlighting the main trends and areas in which progress is evident, as well as the problems confronting these libraries. J.M.

How the ACRL Research as Inquiry Frame Informed Library Instruction at a College of Medicine

ABSTRACT In recent years, librarians have begun to consult the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to inform their library instruction and respond effectively to an ever-changing information ecosystem. This article describes an academic medical library’s experience with framing scholarly research as a discovery process of asking questions and finding answers, in essence, following the basic premise of the ACRL’s “Research as Inquiry” frame. The authors’ development of instructional sessions for undergraduate interdisciplinary medical students has also encouraged their integration of framework concepts with medical education standards and previous active-learning initiatives.

The "Data Visualization Clinic": a library-led critique workshop for data visualization.

BackgroundThe authors’ main university library and affiliated academic medical center library sought to increase library programming around data visualization, a new service area for both libraries. Additionally, our institution is home to many researchers with a strong interest in data visualization but who are generally working in isolation of one another.Case PresentationThis case study describes an innovative workshop, the “Data Visualization Clinic,” where members of our library’s community bring in data visualization projects such as figures in papers, projects hosted online, and handouts and receive constructive feedback from a group of peers. The authors detail the process of hosting a clinic and the feedback that we received from participants.ConclusionsThe “Data Visualization Clinic” offers a viable workshop to leverage expertise of library users and build the library’s reputation as a hub of data visualization services without heavy investment in infrastructure like special monitors or coding skills. That said, it faces the challenge of relying on the participation of the broader community, which is often pressed for time. The event can also serve as an opportunity for researchers who have an interest in data visualization to meet and network.

Community Engagement at an Emerging Academic Medical Library: A Three-Pronged Outreach Model

The Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine’s (OUWB) service-oriented mission and vision is reflected in all aspects of the school including its culture, curriculum, research, community engagement, and the OUWB Medical Library. Though starting informally, the OUWB Medical Library’s outreach program has matured and now sustains a wide array of activities each year. This outreach program has blossomed into a three-pronged model that is inclusive of activities and endeavors engaging the institution and local community: integrate, partner, and create. Among its successes and challenges, the library’s ongoing outreach efforts have showcased the value of libraries in promoting community health and meaningfully contributing to the institutional mission.

Physician-Assisted Death: What Everyone Needs to Know

Physician-Assisted Death is recommended for academic medical centers and hospital libraries. It can be useful to libraries or college courses as a textbook introduction that addresses ethics and pro and con arguments.