Category: Staff News

Objectives

Within the library, Access Services staff stand at the convergence of users and services and are armed with core functional skills. Despite this, they have traditionally played a passive role in patron-centered outreach. Our objective: to see if Access Services could move into an active role in the bigger picture of promoting library services to enhance academic learning and research.

Methods

The “Teach and Tell” project began with identifying each Access Services Department’s (Circulation, ILL, and Media/Computer) unique services and expertise. We aimed to leverage their positions and skills to develop and implement programs to the targeted populations – the faculty, students, clinicians, educators, and staff on the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences campus in Newark, NJ.

Potential projects were then identified for each target population. It was determined that new students needed stress-relief programs during exam periods; research faculty and students lacked awareness of ILL services; and new residents, and first year students needed help with technology and connectivity set up.

The three departments each then developed their own specialized activities based on their individual expertise to meet these demands: Pop Your Stress Out! (Circulation), Need an Article or Book? (ILL) and Technology Briefing: Go Mobile (Media/Computer).

Results

The three departments’ activities were warmly received by students and faculty. Many students commented that the stress release effort helped relieve exam pressure and encouraged that the activity be repeated annually. Approximately 200 students, faculty, and researchers attended the ILL Info session and many requested additional materials for dissemination. The technology briefing was vital to nearly the entire population of new students and crowded the Media Center during the first few weeks of the semester. Via these outreach activities, the Access Services staff contributed significantly to raising awareness of library services and promoting a positive library image.

Conclusions

This project demonstrated that Access Services can go far beyond its traditional, passive desk functions. The success of the project built confidence and motivation among the staff to take on more active roles in patron-centered activities in the future, with multiple project ideas now currently in the pipeline. The “Teach and Tell” project elevated Access Services to get involved in the bigger picture of enhancing academic teaching, learning, and researching.

Objectives
Librarians contributed evidence-based medicine curriculum. The CATs project provides instruction on basic EBM concepts: the evidence pyramid and levels of evidence, formulating a searchable clinical question, using the PICO format, searching PubMEd. Articles were read, synthesized, and turned into a CAT. These skills will be used in clinical rotations and residency. The resulting CATs would populate a database/institutional repository.

Methods
Medical students enrolled in their “Foundations” course were simultaneously enrolled in an “Evidence Based Medicine” Moodle course. Module 2 covers developing searchable clinical questions, breaking them into a PICO format and selecting from among the available library resources when conducting a search. Librarians have embedded exercises within the course. Students are divided into small groups and paired with a partner. The small groups convene in the library for one hour for more focused training on searching PubMed, as well as a quick review of concepts covered in the Moodle course. Students work with their partner to write a focused clinical question, break it down into PICO, connect to PubMed, execute a search, identify at least four relevant articles. They obtain the articles, read and synthesize them, and write a CAT with a clinical bottom line.

Results
An online form was developed and is used to write the CATs, which are submitted directly to the library and to the course director. The completed CATs are presented by each pair to their small group and preceptor. Medical school faculty preceptors have commented on the quality of scholarship exhibited, students’ facility with PubMed, and their understanding of article types and the PICO format exhibited during small group discussions. The library developed a relational database to house the completed CATs but is in discussion to import them into RUCore, the institutional repository.

Conclusions
There is a high degree of interest in this project. Students feel that they are developing a skill that has application for the duration of their career. Faculty and administrators are enthusiastic about the fact that this is not EBM in a vacuum, but for lifelong learners.

Objectives
With the advent of RCM, Responsibility Center Management, as a new financial/budgeting model, fees assessed to schools or departments are more transparent. To demonstrate the value of the libraries beyond collections, an Events Assessment Task Force was formed to gather information about the non-instructional, more social, events hosted by the university libraries.

Methods
The Task Force began by establishing definitions for what constituted an “event”. Members solicited suggestions for event types, such as art shows, Lego building contents, book clubs, exhibits, guest lectures, health information fairs, stress buster activities, and more. There was discussion about the information that was useful to capture for each event, such as number attending, co-sponsorship with another group, time/date/location. An online form was developed. It has drop-down menus which list event types, duration, and other common elements, which make recording easier. The data will be imported into a database capable of report generation. The database is modeled after one currently in use for collecting bibliographic instruction data and reflects both AAHSL and ARL needs At each step of the process, Task Force members solicited comments from library faculty and staff who were involved with various events.

Results
As of this writing, the Events Assessment Task Force presented both the data collection form and the events database to USC, the User Support Council. Both were approved. The next step is to conduct local training sessions to familiarize library faculty and staff with the form and the database in order to acquaint them with all involved procedures and to gain their participation in the data collection.

Conclusions
In the process of developing the online data collection form and the database, it was interesting to note the many types of events hosted by Rutgers University Libraries. By recording the added value that the libraries bring to the university, it may spark more collaborative ventures among members of the libraries staff and with other schools/departments within the university.

Objectives

This study investigated how health sciences libraries provide services to lead, promote, and support initiatives in cultural competence in health professions education or patient care and to examine health sciences librarians’ opinions on cultural competence in relation to library services and professional development. The study serves as needs assessment for our goal to develop a continuing education course on cultural competency for health sciences librarians.

Methods

This is a quantitative research design. Data has been collected with a survey questionnaire including eliciting demographic information, addressing health sciences libraries’ status in provision of culturally competent services and librarians’ perceptions of the importance of cultural competence. The questionnaire was pilot tested with a convenience sample of health sciences librarians to enhance the validity and then administered via SurveyMonkey to MEDLIB-L subscribers of the Medical Library Association. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the collected data.

Results

The survey results revealed that most of respondents (156, 89.1%) indicated the importance of provision of culturally competent library services. The majority of respondents (162, 93.1%) perceived the importance of cultural competence for health sciences librarians. 81 (46.3%) respondents reported to have training and 87 (49.7) indicated no past training experience in cultural competence. When asked if they were interested to take a CE course in cultural competence, 139 (79.4%) expressed their interest.

Conclusion

The research findings contributed to our understanding what types of library services are provided to develop or support cultural competency initiatives and how health sciences librarians perceive cultural competence for librarians. The results are useful for developing future continuing education courses.