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Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Today I got to spend some time with other librarians

at a BML meeting/MLA MLANET: Expert Searcher Teleconference.

If you ever become a solo librarian, I can't emphasise enough how great consortia are for networking with others in your field. I go weeks on end without actually talking with colleagues within my own area. It's interesting to be a librarian within a healthcare setting, don't get me wrong, and lists are great, but sometimes it's nice to just talk to other librarians face to face.

The teleconference was pretty good, although I think it can be difficult to convince others within a clinical setting that librarians and their skills with retrieving and evaluating information can be a vital resource in good evidence-based practice. My experience is that many healthcare professionals see librarians as some sort of glorified secretary. It's different in large institutions with full staffs; most of the examples given were large academic centres or government research facilities--places that have enough staff to specialise in very distinct areas and can actually refer to search bureaus. That's great, but small hospitals with one or two librarians--even if they are expert searchers--are not as likely to capitalise on those skills. I'm lucky that we deal with some fairly esoteric disorders, provide education to students and residents, and also have a clinical research department, so I'm not in danger of my skills atrophying. But I'm not sure they're really appreciated to the degree that these informationist positions are.

One person commented during the teleconference about a study of librarians evaluating search results (since, after all, most of us aren't medical personnel), and they found that the quality of evaluation was on par to say, someone with a master's in public health. That was an interesting tidbit. Still, I'm not sure about the liability issues for a librarian in choosing to pass on some articles over others to a researcher. Without a truly standardised certification or other form of indication, I'm not sure where an informationist, who tends to work in a clinical environment, stands. Librarians don't generally have licensure; we don't carry malpractice insurance. We've had it drummed into our heads to be careful of presenting information as if it were medical or legal advice.

A lot of the concern for supporting a protocol that includes expert searchers stems from the death of a health volunteer that was partly the result of an inadequate search (where the search was not taken back far enough). Most librarians would have caught the error. But search skills do vary with experience and speciality. How do you impart your level of skill in a meaningful way to those who hire or could benefit by collaboration but who aren't librarians?

Medical librarians know what letters like AHIP and FMLA mean. Most other librarians don't. Most clinicans don't. Many places aren't willing to pay any more for going through accreditation. Neither of these actually guarantee that your an expert searcher--they refer to either an accredited series of continuing education and professional involvement (as with the Academy of Health Information Professionals) or that a librarian has been recognised for outstanding contributions to the field (as with the Fellows of the Medical Library Association). There isn't a specific, recognised means of assuring a person's status as a search expert (although MLA has put out a policy statement (PDF) that addresses the definition of expert searcher and the roles and areas where they are most critical.

That's a start. It should be interesting to see how the idea of a clinical librarian or informationist takes hold. But it's also critical that we teach health professionals the value because many do not recognise that general research or clinical skills do not necessarily translate to search ability and that librarians are not merely the people who stamp books but are basically searching magicians who can save time, provide much better searches, and cover all the bases in terms of legal liability and patient safety.

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