Remote and Hybrid Work Options for Health Science Librarians: A Survey of Job Postings Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This study compares health science librarian job postings in the MEDLIB-L listserv from 2018-2019 and 2021-2022 to assess whether there was an increase in remote or hybrid schedule arrangements listed in job advertisements after the pandemic's onset. Results indicated a notable increase in advertising remote/hybrid work arrangements rising from 1.2% of listings in 2018-2019 to 16% of listings in 2021-2022. Data from a 2022 survey of library directors, however, indicated that approximately 70% of respondents expressed confidence in the continuance of remote/hybrid work. Additionally, from a very limited sample size, salaries for remote/hybrid positions did not appear to be less than in-person postings. While current employees at many institutions may benefit from flexible scheduling, this study examines whether job postings, which are often the primary information available to applicants, included information about remote and hybrid work options.

A Self-Paced Online Library Orientation: Development, Implementation, and Assessment.

Health sciences librarians may find it difficult to meet demands for in-person or online synchronous library orientations for various reasons, including short-staffing of librarians, expansion of online programs, and temporary campus closures caused by emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of an asynchronous online orientation tutorial created for use across various health sciences degree, certificate, and training programs. The tutorial can either replace or supplement synchronous orientations, and the original tutorial can be copied and customized for specific programs.

NHS librarians collaborate to develop a search bank peer reviewing and sharing COVID-19 searches: an evaluation.

BACKGROUND: Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Health Education England (HEE) mobilised a group of expert searchers from NHS libraries in England to develop a platform for librarians to share peer reviewed search strategies and results on the Knowledge for Healthcare website. OBJECTIVES: (1) To document the origins of the COVID-19 search bank, (2) evaluate attitudes of NHS librarians in England towards the search bank and (3) identify lessons learned and consider whether the initiative might be developed further. METHODS: Structured interviews with the peer reviewers (n = 10) were conducted, and a questionnaire survey of the NHS library community using the search bank was undertaken. RESULTS: The interviews confirmed the value of collaboration. Expert searchers worked in pairs to peer review submitted search strategies. The survey (85 responses) indicated that a majority had used the search bank, and approved of the project, with some differences of opinion on functionality and future developments. DISCUSSION: Collaborative working for the search bank probably saved time for individual NHS librarians. The quality of the searches submitted was variable as were librarians' approaches to presentation and development of search strategies. Peer review benefits from a buddy approach among expert searchers and agreement about feedback provided to contributors. CONCLUSION: Search strategies are the most useful element of a search bank. Peer review can be challenging and would benefit from a formal structure, but it is professionally rewarding.

The impact of COVID-19 on reference services: a national survey of academic health sciences librarians.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of the scope and adaptive nature of reference services provided by academic health sciences librarians over a one-year period (between March 2020 and March 2021) during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: In March 2021, academic health sciences librarians in the United States were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey about their experiences providing reference services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The online survey was developed, pretested, and distributed to various listservs. RESULTS: A total of 205 academic health sciences librarians and other information professionals with health sciences liaison responsibilities in the US (N=205) responded to the online survey. The scope of reference services provided during the COVID-19 pandemic included email-based reference services (97%), virtual reference (89%), telephone (80%), text-based (33%), and in-person (31%). The most common types of COVID-related reference questions included COVID-19 treatments (53%), safety precautions (46%), vaccines (41%), and prevalence (38%). Additionally, the identification of challenging reference questions and examples of misinformation were provided by respondents. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the survey characterize the evolving nature and scope of academic health sciences reference work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Librarians reported an increase in reference questions during the pandemic and are answering them in creative ways despite barriers (e.g., limited time and reduction in resources). There is an opportunity for librarians to continue to address COVID-related misinformation. Overall, these findings provide useful insight for library practitioners and administrators planning reference services during public health crises.

Designing a Workflow for Online Learning Objects Created by Health Sciences Librarians.

The COVID-19 lockdown led to immediate changes in how Virginia Commonwealth University's (VCU) Health Sciences Library (HSL) would support faculty and students through the means of online learning objects (OLOs). Each Research and Education (RED) librarian is responsible for responding to the educational needs of a specific health sciences school or college as well as those of the VCU Health System. A rapid increase in the OLO creation required a mechanism to curate these objects, make them available to all liaisons, and standardize workflows. The act of curating and creating standardized workflows would allow for easier management and updating of content, the ability to share and cross-pollinate content between liaisons, and the prevention of duplicated content by liaisons, thus lessening the workload. Support from key stakeholders, including RED administrators, the Online Learning Librarian (OLL), and the Multimedia Teaching and Learning Librarian (MTLL), enabled a team of RED librarians (who formed an Online Learning Team (OLT)) to standardize workflows and upload them to the department's intranet for future reference.

A health education outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library: lessons learned before and during a pandemic.

Background: Public libraries serve as community centers for accessing free, trustworthy health information. As such, they provide an ideal setting to teach the local community about health and health literacy, particularly during public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2018, an outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library has developed, delivered, and continuously evaluated a health education program targeting public library users. Case Presentation: Health education activities were integrated into three existing public library programs: adult workshops, child and family programming, and circulating family activity kits. Prior to COVID-19, events were held at the public library, which then pivoted online during the pandemic. An interprofessional team approach combined the expertise of academic medical and public librarians, medical school faculty and staff, and medical students in developing the educational programs. Twelve in-person and five virtual programs were offered, and five circulating health education family kits were launched. Activities were assessed using program evaluation surveys of the adult and children's programs and circulation statistics of the kits. Conclusions: This case report showcases the lessons learned from implementing a longitudinal outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interprofessional team approach and flexibility in program design and delivery in both the in-person and virtual environments proved critical to the success of the partnership. This partnership could serve as a model for other libraries interested in pursuing interprofessional collaborations in educating local communities on healthy behavior and health information-seeking practices.

History in your hand.

In the swirl of current events including a pandemic and new chapters in the awareness of race and gender, it is the professional responsibility of librarians and archivists to create durable records for future scholars, so they can understand our present.

¡Presente!: Affirming Latinx voices within health sciences library scholarship.

Increasing diverse author representation within medical librarianship scholarship among BIPOC information professionals is an important endeavor that requires closer examination. This commentary looks to examine the ways in which the profession can support Latinx librarians and library workers in fully participating within the scholarly pipeline by exploring our unique and authentic voices, structural barriers, hesitation and fears, Whiteness in the profession and knowledge production, bias in the peer review process, lack of resources and support, and finally, a call to action.

Hospital Librarians Meet the Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States in early 2020, it caused an information explosion in the health science literature. Researchers wanted to share their results quickly, so they utilized sources that were not indexed in conventional databases. Hospital librarians stepped up to meet the information and public health challenges of the pandemic. They developed alternate strategies to provide services and resources remotely at a time when their physical libraries were closed to comply with the need for social distancing and compliance with public health recommendations.

Search is a verb: systematic review searching as invisible labor.

Invisible labor is a term used by labor economists to describe work that contributes, and is often even necessary, to the economy but largely goes unrecognized and unpaid. Despite the fact that systematic review searching is a significant task for many librarians and knowledge professionals, the search process can be considered a form of invisible labor because it often goes without recognition. This occurs sometimes through not granting authorship to the librarian who performed the intellectual contribution of search development and sometimes through a devaluing of the search process by the choice of language used to describe the search. By using the term search as a passive verb or noun, authors devalue the real intellectual labor involved in searching, which includes decisions related to search terms and combinations, database selection, and other search parameters. This commentary explores the context of how searching is described through the concept of invisible labor.

Building a Bridge: A Review of Information Literacy in Nursing Education.

BACKGROUND: Although information literacy (IL) has been valuable in nursing education, guiding documents from librarianship (e.g., Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education) remain relatively obscure among nursing faculty. This review analyzes the intersection of IL with nursing and offers analyses for a better understanding of integrating IL into nursing education settings. METHOD: Scholarly literature was searched, and Covidence was used to track themes regarding how (and where) IL literature (n = 179) connects to nursing educational settings. RESULTS: Librarians are not involved consistently within nursing education. Research and discussion on IL in nursing are published in librarianship, education, and health sciences literature, and the terminology does not always align across these disciplines. CONCLUSION: Findings indicate an opportunity for librarians to share the Framework and its connections to the research literature with the nursing community. Researchers share suggestions for how common themes, language, and ideas can be shared between librarians and nursing faculty. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(8):431-436.].

Shaping a librarian; the impact of Shane Godbolt as manager, mentor and more.

A personal appreciation of Shane Godbolt as a colleague and friend.

Global responses of health science librarians to the COVID-19 (Corona virus) pandemic: a desktop analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges for health science librarians. During this pandemic, librarians are playing an active role by increasing the public's awareness of the virus, maintaining document delivery services and providing research support. This paper uses the method of desktop analysis of the websites of selected library associations to identify the responses of health science librarians to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study highlights significant initiatives taken by some health science librarians which can be replicated by others to meet the needs of library users in the COVID-19 health crisis.J.M.

An Introduction to Telehealth and COVID-19 Innovations - A Primer for Librarians.

Telehealth services have slowly yet steadily increased over the past few decades as new technologies emerge. However, social distancing mandates, state shutdowns, and an overburdened healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic forced a dramatic surge forward in telehealth use and policy. While many of these emergency measures are temporary, the successes, failures and lessons learned during this period will change the way telehealth is administered, moving forward. This column will review recent changes to telehealth and telemedicine services during the pandemic and their impact on healthcare systems.

The Librarian Reserve Corps: An Emergency Response.

The Librarian Reserve Corps (LRC) is a volunteer network of medical, health sciences, and public health librarians who have responded to the urgent need for public health information during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. The LRC was first formed to assist with the indexing of daily publication lists distributed within the World Health Organization's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). With the explosion of information related to COVID-19 beginning in December 2019, librarians have brought critical skills and experience to the response, providing comprehensive literature searching and indexing to COVID-19 research publications. The evolution of this effort follows the trajectory of scientific publication trends and developments related to COVID-19.

Librarian Contributions to a Regional Response in the COVID-19 Pandemic in Western North Carolina.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mountain Area Health Education Center formed a response team with the goal of building capacity across Western North Carolina health systems to collectively identify needs, coordinate resources to fill gaps, and strategically manage the regional threats of the pandemic. The library team collaborated on interprofessional projects by gathering information and using LibGuides to quickly and easily organize and share resources. The team met challenges, including moving to telecommuting, balancing a growing workload, and navigating a changing information landscape, and in doing so, strengthened relationships across the organization and the region.

Mind like Water: Flexibly Adapting to Serve Patrons in the Era of COVID-19.

The ability to be flexible and adapt quickly to changing circumstances is a crucial skill for librarians to develop in a world increasingly characterized by rapid change. It can take a crisis to learn how effective librarians have become in developing the needed adaptive behaviors, including a willingness to change workstyles, experiment with new technologies and readily move on from failed experiments. In this paper, librarians from the Preston Medical Library at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, prompted by the crisis of COVID-19, present their response. Beginning with a description of how services were provided prior to the pandemic, librarians detail their response in several key areas and show how they implemented new approaches to teaching, collaboration, and mutual support, working together to handle patron issues and pursue scholarly activities.

A Novel Partnership Between Physicians and Medical Librarians During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

An ongoing collaboration between physicians and librarians provided critical information during the COVID-19 pandemic. A development team, which consisted of the hospital and medical school disaster preparedness medical director, the medical library director, professional librarians, and the Departments of IT and Marketing in a multi-state healthcare system worked together to develop a shared website to distribute and curate timely resources during COVID-19. The initial impacts of this collaboration and the website show the benefits of this novel partnership.

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge: a health literacy training partnership before and during COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: A request for consumer health information training for public librarians led to the development of a specialized consumer health reference and health literacy training program by professional consumer health librarians from an academic medical center. Professional consumer health librarians created an interactive presentation aimed at improving public librarians' ability to respond to consumer health questions and provide vetted health resources. CASE PRESENTATION: Building on professional expertise, librarians at Weill Cornell Medicine developed a live class demonstration accompanied by a representative subject LibGuide to support public librarians who assist patrons with health questions. Skills involved in effectively communicating with patrons who are seeking consumer health information include conducting reference interviews, matching patrons' needs with appropriate resources, teaching useful Internet search methods, assessing health information, and understanding health literacy issues. Originally envisioned as two in-person live demonstrations, the team proactively adapted the program to respond to the stay-at-home social-distancing order put in place in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: The team successfully led an in-person live training session followed by an adapted online training experience, the latter designed to complete the curricula while complying with city and state orders.

Communicating with medical library users during COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library serves a community of over 22,000 individuals primarily from the Yale Schools of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing and the Yale New Haven Hospital. Though they are geographically close to one another, reaching these disparate populations can be a challenge. Having a clear and thorough communication plan has proved invaluable in transcending communication chasms, especially in recent times of crisis. CASE PRESENTATION: This article describes the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library's methods for communicating and promoting its remote resources and services in response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It details our communication strategies and messages leading up to, and after, the Yale campus was closed and specifies how we pivoted from reaching users inside the library to reaching our audiences remotely. CONCLUSIONS: Our communication plan has provided the foundation for all of our messaging, be it print or digital media. In recent moments of crisis, it has been especially helpful for planning and executing large scale messaging. Similarly, knowing whom to contact around our organization to promote our message in different and broader ways has been extremely beneficial.