New roles of health librarians

Objective

To evaluate the delivery of a one-semester graduate level course in Health Librarianship (LIS 520), as taught by a team of eleven co-instructors, and to create best practices for teaching with very large teams in health sciences librarianship.

Background

Eleven practicing health librarians taught LIS 520 as a large team, rather than as a course with one instructor and many guest lecturers. There are no best practices for large team teaching, however the team reviewed the work of Cruz and Zaragoza(1) and George and Davis-Willey(2) which provided some general guidelines for team teaching.   LIS 520 ran three hours/week for thirteen weeks. Seven students were enrolled.   All of the librarians were involved in the development of the curriculum which included specific aspects of health librarianship ranging from collection development and services to different health information user groups to systematic review searching and health information consortia.  Each librarian taught at least one class.    All instructors were encouraged to teach in whatever style they chose, but to employ active-learning techniques, where possible.  Instructors also undertook various roles such as acting as mentors for searchers, class coordination and marking assignments.

Methods

Students completed evaluative questionnaire surveys at the mid-point and the end of the course. The librarians responded to a survey document, either individually in print or verbally in a team meeting. Librarians also worked together to create a best practices document.  Two librarians collated and analysed the survey results.

Results

Evaluation

Student’s responses were positive. Students compared ten aspects of the course with their experiences in other courses taught by three or fewer instructors. These areas included:  organization of course materials and sessions, communications with students and among the teaching team members, mastery of material presented, maintaining student interest in class, range of learning activity types, availability for consultations, willingness to give extra help, and  instructor engagement or interest in the course.   In all ten areas, 100% of the students rated LIS520 as “better” or “about the same” as their other experiences.   Written responses revealed that students particularly valued the variety of instructional methods and the variety and depth of expertise brought by the eleven instructors.  Librarians’ responses to teaching as a team were also positive.  The librarians valued the opportunity to contribute to the education of graduate level library school students, without having to commit to teaching an entire course on their own.  They also enjoyed the opportunity to teach with a partner and within their own discipline.  The librarians suggested that the team teaching experience was made easier by the fact that the class size was small and all of the librarians were already part of a working team before undertaking the course. 100% of the librarians would take part in teaching the course again.  All of the librarians contributed to the best practices document.

Best Practices

One of the outcomes of this project was the development of a best practices document.

 Best Practices for Teaching with a Very Large Team.

1. Ensure that one or more team members take on the role of coordinating team efforts, so that there is consistency and efficiency across the course.
2. Make one person the primary communications point for the students and the course faculty.
3. In advance, establish within the team how grading will be done. Ensure that the students know how consistency and fairness will be maintained in the assignment of grades. 
4. Ensure that members of the teaching team have the opportunity to get to know each other.  If team members do not have prior experience with each other, there may need to be some team building exercises in advance of the course.
5. Ensure that multiple methods of communication are encouraged and used within the team.
6. Ensure that all members of the team have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the curriculum, including the assignments, so that all instructors have a broad understanding of the course and the workload required of the students and the instructors.
7. Come to consensus on who will teach what, allowing team members to choose to teach either in their areas of expertise, or perhaps with another instructor in an area in which they would like to develop expertise.
8. Involve the instructors to the level that they can be/want to be involved.  One of the benefits of a large team is that people can contribute more or less, depending upon their skills, knowledge, abilities and available time. 
9. Build in multiple points of contact between the students and the various instructors, so that the students have the opportunity to get to know more of the instructors.
10. Ensure that all instructors place their teaching materials into a repository that is accessible by all, so that instructors can see in detail what content has already been covered.
11. Allow the instructors to introduce their own teaching methods and styles to take advantage of the breadth of teaching skills that the team members bring to the course.
12. Incorporate a de-briefing session so that instructors can reflect upon the team’s work and offer suggestions for improvement.
13. Have fun and find ways for the students to have fun. 

Discussion

There are considerable benefits to be derived from teaching as a large team, particularly when the team members do not have time to take on an entire course by themselves.  In teaching health sciences librarianship with a large team of practitioners, students benefit from exposure to the much larger specialized knowledge base of the team. If the course is offered again, it will probably be taught again by this team. The best practices document will guide the team in improving the delivery of the course. 

How to get a children´s perspective through children’s fiction for students at Medical School.

For some years ago we wanted to give the students at Umea University, who in their coming profession will meet children in difficult situations, a more deep perspective on how it is to be a little child in bad circumstances through fiction literature. We wanted to do this for those who studied at the Police school, the Social work education and the Medical School. But we minimized our efforts to get money to manage this project only at the Medical School.

We chose the time of our lessons when the students in Medical School had their Pediatric and Obstetrics courses and as a complement to the course books in those courses we wanted to work with childrens fiction. The plans and ideas was planned by one medical librarian from the Medical Library, one childrens books librarian from the county library and a drama teacher from the department of Pedagogy at the university.

As the course time was already fulltime for the students, we had to schedule our lessons to those days when all students where back from their clinical work in different hospitals and clinics and in the beginning of the semester. So we planned and had three meetings with three different subjects in the fiction literature. The subjects were anorexia, child abuse and sick children + children as family to sick parents, brothers or sisters. First we tested different literature methods and drama methods in a group of medical librarians, information retrieval teachers.

The students participation was optional. So those that wanted to join could do that. At first we got 15 interested students that checked out books to read the literature. But everyone couldn’t come to the meetings, so we had a group of 8 students that came every time. At each meeting the students could discuss the books that we all had read and the drama teacher had different drama sessions as Forum plays, State your point of view at a line, Questions in four corners.

The important thing was to get a deeper childrens perspective for the students. So that they would feel safer in their physician’s role with the children, adolescents and parents at the appointments and that they sometimes can see beyond what the patients say.

In December we will have all evaluation data ready from the students. So we can present the results from the whole project.

Introduction

Health Sciences - rapidly growing fields, require cooperation from the entire scientific community.  Research outcomes are no longer associated with one country or continent.  Advanced technology permits transmission  of information related to health across the borders. 

There is no doubt that all available scientific information has pros and cons.  The flood of health related information available on different tools, such as commercial or free (Open Access) journals and databases, often creates more confusion than assistance.  The issue still remains the same: how to access and efficiently use the best tools.  Within the constantly changing information environment, the perception of library is shifting and the librarian’s role is growing. 

Objectives

The model of state of the art library is not only modern facilities with advanced technology and access to many different types of resources but first of all “new age” librarians. Scott Plutchak points out that librarians “help people distinguish between what is worthwhile for them and what is not, and that help them get directly to the information resources that they need.” (1) This process requires collaboration  between researchers and librarians since patrons information needs have been changing as well.

The academic medical library plays important role in health system of any country in the world because the health professionals are also trained by librarians. The health librarians role is significant.  They must not only determine and wisely choose the right resources in terms of financial affordability of the organization they work for and efficacy of selected tools but also promote and implement these tools in the end-users’ environment.  Even though every online database is accompanied by a sophisticated manual, not all users read it.  Sometimes they are not aware of it, or they have no time to do it.  Frustration about not being able to find relevant information or getting used to a particular database is common among scientists and students.

The health librarians, a liaison between resource providers and end-users, must be proactive in accommodating their clients’ needs. The librarians are at the forefront of innovations and implementation, and filter resources for the patrons.   First, they need to learn not only about all features of a given resource, but also about its content.  Second, they need to produce the promotional materials that give their users substantial evidence that using this particular resource will benefit their work. Third, they have to play a role of a trainer, a teacher, who shows how to efficiently use all of the available and selected tools.  That would include creating such information as alerts related to their subject of research, user profiles, guides, pamphlets, presentations, and other instructional handouts.  The most important though is they have to be open and adaptable to emerging trends of conducting research. They need to make their presence in patrons professional lives.  It also means to guide scientists thorough new ways of publishing their papers and be a part of international arena in open science and open access.

Methods

The Library of the Medical University of Lodz subscribes to various platforms containing biomedical information such as bibliographical databases and online full text journals.  The Library acquires access to these resources through participation in the Polish national or local consortia, or through institutional subscriptions.  Most of them are internationally recognized and available in the English language only.  As for the Reference librarians, the challenge lies in several areas.  First of all, they have to find the best way to present all relevant resources on the library website - the business card of the library.  They must then go through tutorials or participate in trainings offered by a publisher, learn how to perform a database search, experiment, and demonstrate how the tools of this particular database differ from those of other databases.  Next, they need to prepare the slide show presentations which are  uploaded on the Library’s Moodle -open e-learning platform.  In order to successfully deliver these information packages they need to demonstrate their expertise using Microsoft PowerPoint, Publisher, Moodle, and other tools for creating presentations.

There are two aspects of the librarian’s activity : learning and teaching.  In Medical University of Lodz, we can enumerate some of the main activities of our staff.

Within librarians’ education we are

• Attending workshops organized by database providers such as Thomson Reuters, EBSCO, Ovid, ProQuest whether in-person classes or webinars
• Learning retrieval features from online tutorials offered by database providers or other academic medical institutions
• Participating in domestic and international conferences related to library technology and trends in librarianship to get new ideas such as  “The Menu” concept introduced by Marie Källberg from Karolinska University Hospital Library at EAHIL conference in Lisbon, in 2010 (2)
• Attending workshops on e-learning platform such as Moodle
• Personal contacts with fellow librarians
• Using Web 2.0 tools – social networking: monitoring blogs, facebook profiles  and other postings of librarians who implement innovative strategies in their libraries
• Learning how to use advanced options of the word processors,  programs for preparing presentations, creating images and publishing tools to create leaflets and web presentations

 Teaching and promoting resources among library users included  

• Organizing workshops conducted by representatives of database providers, for example Thomson Reuters on using Web of Science, EndNote Web and Journal Citation Reports
• Producing 33 PowerPoint Presentations on using databases and library catalogues and placing them on e-learning platform Moodle
• Creating our version of the workshops Menu entitled Make friends with the library contained 15 topics with brief descriptions and approximate of duration and publishing it on the library home page.
• Introducing and presenting the menu while attending  faculty meetings in 2010/2011 academic year
• Creating the library training online for freshmen and graduate students and placing it on the library’s e-learning platform.
• Conducting  the 25hrs Scientific Information  course for 75 PhD students
• Offering individual consultations
• Presenting of library services in the Information Bulletin of the Medical University of Lodz. 
• Conducting  workshops and presentations of library services  at the University’s  departments, clinics, institutes.

Discussion

By presenting the poster State of the Art Health Library – serving the scientific community and information literacy we would like to emphasize the important role of medical academic librarians in the fast changing information environment with the use on an example of the Library of the Medical University of Lodz.  Librarians constantly have to increase their knowledge about new technologies following information published in specialistic publications, exchange experiences by participating in national and international conferences and workshops, cooperating with librarians from other institutions.  The most important part, however, is promotion of the new resource among the University’s patrons.  Even though an announcement is usually made through the institutional mail service and the Library web site, many users may not be aware of it. Creating educational materials, attending faculty meetings, scheduling workshops and preparing handouts suited to the clients’ needs must follow.

For the future the librarians will have to face the challenge of convincing the academics of the benefits of open science: submit their work in open repositories and Open Access Journals, participate in local and international open science platforms. Our future task will be  to show how to teach students using open educational resources, how  to prepare, share and re-use them.

The role of modern health librarian has totally changed from traditional image of  “guardian of books”  to professional trainer and marketer.

This paper outlines ways in which health librarian roles are changing in response to evolving healthcare paradigms at a time of economic stringency. It is based on the findings of a project commissioned by the Health Sciences Libraries Group of the Library Association of Ireland to investigate the status of health libraries and librarianship in Ireland in 2010-11, undertaken by the Department of Information Science and the Library, Information and Statistics Unit (LISU) at Loughborough University, UK.

A mixed methods approach including a questionnaire, one-to-one interviews, and a focus group was used to scope the Irish health libraries’ environment, taking views from both stakeholders and practitioners.

The research found the Irish health library environment to be professionally run, and librarians dedicated and determined. Health libraries and librarians were perceived to be under immense pressure at a time of shrinking budgets for health care. In both the academic and hospital settings health libraries were aware of a need to show value for money and to demonstrate importance of their services. The health care environment across the world is forever changing, so that health librarians are forced to assess and re-assess skills and services.  Roles such as ‘clinical informationist’, and ‘clinical librarian’ appeared relatively under-developed in Irish health libraries when compared to other parts of the world. There was also felt to be a need for development of more corporate skills, to effectively engage with senior managers in the wider health service,

Recommendations were made to facilitate changes in health librarianship in Ireland to meet the new demands of economic climate and to align the profession with international standards, including in the areas of training/CPD and marketing of expertise as well as in developing new ways of working suggested by international examples of good practice.