On October 9, the HSL Research Team took first place among the research posters presented at the Midcontinental Chapter of the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting in Wichita, KS. The poster presents data from the first group of four hospitals that participated in the study. All of the hospital librarians who participated are listed as co-authors.
The poster, “Views of the Library: A Regional Study in Selected Missouri and Colorado Libraries,” by Deborah Ward, MA, MLS; MaryEllen Cullinan Sievert, MLS; Ph.D.; Dirk Burhans, Ph.D.; Barbara Jones, MLS; Margaret Bandy, MLS; Jerry Carlson, MLS, AHIP; Sandy Decker; Holly Henderson, MA, has been submitted to MOspace for archiving. It has been posted on the wall in the HSL Conference Room, and you are welcome to come see it if you prefer that to viewing it online.
For background, the study was carried out in three phases.
1. Preliminary studies conducted with the MU Departments of Child Health, Internal Medicine, and Family & Community Medicine gave us positive data and the confidence to extend the methodology beyond our institution.
2. A similar study at the University of Colorado at Denver (as a comparator to the MU HSL), fostered the study of two hospitals in Missouri and two hospitals in Colorado for the collection of comparable data. The poster that won the award is a product of the four hospital studies.
3. Additional studies at the hospitals of interested librarians in the six-state region served by the Midcontinental Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine are now in progress.
Findings from these studies are valuable for the advocacy efforts of Barb Jones, whose special project area for the region is library advocacy. This work is important because hospital library closure is a reality faced by health sciences librarians. The health care climate is one in which value must be presented to decision-makers in order to receive continuing funding. Our goal is to publish articles that hospital librarians in our region, and beyond, can use to highlight their value to their administrators.
MaryEllen Sievert and Dirk Burhans have an established record of supporting practicing librarians here at MU in library research, and we hope that they will be willing to shift their focus to support the broader research needs of the MU Libraries in the future.
Submitted by Deb Ward, 10/14/10