Authors : Jessy Abdul, Mahabaleshwara Rao, Amitha Puranik
The advancement of science and technology has impacted functioning of the libraries of higher educational institutions, and the mode of providing resources for various academic activities.
For many years, libraries attached to educational institutions have been labouring with the question of how to determine the value of journals in their specific library collection. The Health Sciences Library of Manipal Academy of Higher Education at Manipal, subscribed a vast number of online journals for their users.
A relation between the usage and citations of subscribed online journals might provide a basis for the collection management in the libraries of academic and research institutions.
The current study resolved to identify whether relationship exists between usage of subscribed online journals and their citations in the academic publications of the health science professionals from 2010 to 2015.
The study found a statistically significant relationship between subscribed online journal usage and their citations in the publications through the inferential test of Spearman’s rank-order correlation.
For collection development of online journals, libraries can utilise the usage or citation data of journals as a decision making tool.
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Authors : Tania P. Bardyn, Emily F. Patridge, Michael T. Moore, Jane J. Koh
Medical libraries need to actively review their service models and explore partnerships with other campus entities to provide better-coordinated clinical research management services to faculty and researchers. TRAIL (Translational Research and Information Lab), a five-partner initiative at the University of Washington (UW), explores how best to leverage existing expertise and space to deliver clinical research data management (CRDM) services and emerging technology support to clinical researchers at UW and collaborating institutions in the Pacific Northwest.
The initiative offers 14 services and a technology-enhanced innovation lab located in the Health Sciences Library (HSL) to support the University of Washington clinical and research enterprise.
Sharing of staff and resources merges library and non-library workflows, better coordinating data and innovation services to clinical researchers. Librarians have adopted new roles in CRDM, such as providing user support and training for UW’s Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) instance.
TRAIL staff are quickly adapting to changing workflows and shared services, including teaching classes on tools used to manage clinical research data. Researcher interest in TRAIL has sparked new collaborative initiatives and service offerings. Marketing and promotion will be important for raising researchers’ awareness of available services.
Medical librarians are developing new skills by supporting and teaching CRDM. Clinical and data librarians better understand the information needs of clinical and translational researchers by being involved in the earlier stages of the research cycle and identifying technologies that can improve healthcare outcomes.
At health sciences libraries, leveraging existing resources and bringing services together is central to how university medical librarians will operate in the future.
DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2018.1130
Authors : Lotta Haglund, Annikki Roos, Petra Wallgren-Björk
Librarians in Sweden are facing huge challenges in meeting the demands of their organisations and users. This article looks at four key areas: coping with open science/open access initiatives; increasing demands from researchers for support doing systematic reviews; understanding user experiences in Swedish health science libraries; and the consequences of expanding roles for recruitment and continuing professional development.
With regard to changing roles, there is an increasing shift from the generalist towards the expert role. The authors raise the issue as to how to prepare those new to the profession to the changing environment of health science libraries.