ABSTRACT
Have librarians promoted end user searching to the detriment of the profession and promoted clinical inefficiency from causally trained health practitioners? Issues related to the complexity of bibliographic retrieval in the networked environment are explored within the context of evidence-based medicine and the division of labor.
Subject(s)
Evidence-Based Medicine , Libraries, Hospital , Library Services , Databases, Bibliographic , Education, Medical, Continuing , Humans , Internet , IowaABSTRACT
An evaluation was conducted at the University of Iowa Health Sciences Library to determine what effect the user's presence had on MEDLINE search results. One hundred users participated over a four-month period. Three main criteria were used: search precision, search recall, and user satisfaction. Each MEDLINE search was processed twice, once prior to the user's arrival and a second time during the scheduled appointment with the user. The two searches for each user were processed by different searchers, and four searchers alternated processing the user-absent or the user-present search. Users were asked to compare the citations on the two searchers by checking each printout for relevant citations. A short questionnaire was administered to determine general information about users and satisfaction measures for each search. The extensiveness of the interview for the user-absent search was varied in order to determine if the depth of the initial interview would affect the search results. Evaluation of the findings indicated an increase in precision, recall, and user satisfaction for the user-present search. Some difficulties in designing the experiment are discussed and implications of the evaluation results are considered.
Subject(s)
MEDLARS , Consumer Behavior , Surveys and Questionnaires , Time Factors , United StatesABSTRACT
In the summer of 1973 one resource library in each of the six states of the Midwest Health Science Library Network received funding from the National Library of Medicine to hire a coordinator for health science libraries. The development of the role of coordinator is examined and evaluated. The coordinators have proved valuable in the areas of consortium formation, basic unit development, communication facilitation, and program initiation. The function of the coordinators in the extensive planning effort now being undertaken by the network and the future need for the coordinator positions are discussed.
