Expert searching in health librarianship: a literature review to identify international issues and Australian concerns

Abstract

Background: The traditional role of health librarians as expert searchers is under challenge. Objectives: The purpose of this review is to establish health librarians' views, practices and educational processes on expert searching. Methods: The search strategy was developed in LISTA and then customised for ten other databases: ALISA, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. The search terms were (expert search* OR expert retriev* OR mediated search* OR information retriev*) AND librar*. The searches, completed in December 2010 and repeated in May 2011, were limited to English language publications from 2000 to 2011 (unless seminal works). Results: Expert searching remains a key role for health librarians, especially for those supporting systematic reviews or employed as clinical librarians answering clinical questions. Conclusions: Although clients tend to be satisfied with searches carried out for them, improvements are required to effectively position the profession. Evidence-based guidelines, adherence to transparent standards, review of entry-level education requirements and a commitment to accredited, rigorous, ongoing professional development will ensure best practice.

Evaluation of hospital staff’s perceived quality of librarian-mediated literature searching services

“…Librarian-mediated literature searching remains one of the key services that health sciences librarians provide [1, 2]. The evidence suggests that library services—in which literature searching is prominent—save clinicians time [3–7], influence clinical decision making [3, 5–8], and positively impact patient outcomes [5, 7, 9, 10].…”

International trends in health science librarianship part 20: Russia

“…These sources, however, cannot completely replace paper editions of journals and handbooks. Evidence‐based health care has had a significant impact on the role of health librarians . Without PubMed, evidence‐based medicine will give way to scientific misconduct, biases due to conflict of interests, placebo treatments, obscurantism in the guise of traditional medicine, etc.…”

The Use of Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) Software to Create a Database of Librarian-Mediated Literature Searches

“…However, multiple barriers to effective provision of this service exist, including the lack of objective measures of quality in expert searching education and practice. 3 One approach to providing the data and evidence required for quality improvement in expert searching is the collection and analysis of search strategies and related data, including requester demographic information. Using an electronic tool to gather these data can facilitate search practice analysis, workload tracking, and foster expertise-sharing and quality improvement 4 and may lead to the development of a more rigorous approach to conducting complex literature searching.…”