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Current Evidence Summary

Page history last edited by catherine.voutier@gmail.com 7 years, 11 months ago

HLA Evidence Summary written by

Veronica Delafosse

Citation

Friesen C, LĂȘ ML, Cooke C, Raynard M. Analysis of a librarian-mediated literature search service. Med Ref Serv Q. 2015;34(1):29-46. doi: 10.1080/02763869.2015.986782.

Author Objectives

Initially, the objectives appear to be clearly stated in the abstract and introduction. They include the main issues and outcomes which were used to define recommendations for improvement and standardization of the librarian-mediated literature search service offered by a large health library system. However, on closer inspection, the question of librarians focusing on complex searches is mentioned in the 'background' section but not revisited. Other recommendations which came out of an organisational review are not stated. It is also unclear as to what other potential 'improvements' the authors were expecting to locate evidence.

Methodology

 

  • Subject & Setting

 

  • Study Design

The impetus for the study was an organisational review which suggested that librarians should focus on complex searches while leaving patrons to do straightforward searches themselves. A Task Group was formed to look for evidence as to whether this, or some other improvements to the service, could be recommended based on a review of the literature and an analysis of the current service.

This is a retrospective quantitative study analysing 10 years (2004-2014) of data describing 19,248 literature searches from a cohort of patrons of the University of Manitoba Health Sciences Libraries (Canada). The setting comprises 18 librarians, 9 libraries including 1 academic, 8 affiliated hospital libraries, participating regional and provincial health authorities. The broad range of clients has varying degrees of access to, and experience in, searching databases and library resources.

Results
The results aim to reflect the initial broad issues of the volume and frequency of search requests, time spent, databases used, and patron categories, and are used to form recommendations for improvement and standardization. Despite the high numbers, thorough detailed statistics, and revelation of shortcomings we cannot be reasonably confident with the results. Some broad generalisations can be made. The decline in search requests could be due to a variety of reasons and could have been correlated with database training statistics.
Authors Conclusions

The authors acknowledged limitations due to completeness, accuracy and reliability. The authors deselected the statistics where librarians were known to be deliberately inconsistent about entering time frames. The total data for the average time spent on searches omitted more than half (51.4%, 9,901 searches), thereby skewing the results. Only 43.5% of the data for patron profiles was usable.

The authors rationalised their decision to exclude literature searches supporting systematic reviews because of incompleteness and the potential to skew the results due to the comparatively longer time spent on these searches.

The general consensus is that literature searching is a key service. Improvements could be made in data collection, service promotion, surveying, and overall service standards. The appendix contains recommendations from the Task Group on service standards and best practice.
HLA Commentary
It is not clear how the data can be used to make judgements about the service. We are given information about the number of searches undertaken and the time taken to complete searches, but not about the quality of the searches, user satisfaction, the intended use of the results, whether the searches would be improved if the librarians had more time to spend on them, the value of the library service and any relation to improved patient care.   We are concerned that Google is searched ahead of higher level evidence in the priority of databases accessed. This could be related to an increase in search requests to support systematic reviews. Instead of excluding them the systematic reviews could have been a sub-group. The authors comment on the results relating to the volume of searches performed, noting that this reached a peak in 2009-10 before declining. The authors suggest that they need to recruit new users of the service to reverse this trend. The conclusions are vague and not clearly supported by the study. For example, at the end of the literature review section the authors comment 'the differences between organizations make it extremely difficult to compare libraries to find any sort of standards when it comes to service procedures' and yet one of their recommendations is 'development of necessary procedures and best practice guidelines for literature searches and systematic reviews'. Recommendations from the Task Group on service standards and best practice form a useful list but should have been in the conclusions rather than in the appendix. The dot points are transferable to our libraries but it is not clear how some of these were derived.

Implications for practice or research

This is a timely reminder to be very clear about the type of data you collect and why so you can measure it in a constructive, unbiased way. Though literature search skills were as valued as information skills training, they were viewed as complementary. Literature searches as a service is generally not listed on public websites. Do we need to ensure that our Internet accessible websites accurately reflect our services or should these be listed only on our Intranets? Nurses were the highest requesters of literature searches. Further breakdown of categories would help determine needs analysis.

 

 

 

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