{"id":32136,"date":"2024-10-28T14:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-28T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/?p=32136"},"modified":"2024-10-28T14:34:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T21:34:11","slug":"medical-librarians-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/2024\/10\/28\/medical-librarians-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical Librarians Month: Giving Providers Information to Make Informed Decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Story by WSU Insider<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October is Medical Librarians Month, and Ann Dyer, director of the WSU Health Sciences Library<\/a> in Spokane, recently spoke about her profession and the importance of medical librarianship to all health sciences fields, which rely on an incredible degree of trust between patients and their providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat trust is based on the idea that their providers know the best current information to help them prevent illness or return to health,\u201d she said. \u201cHowever, the landscape of medical information is extraordinarily vast, complex, and in constant flux. Medical libraries organize that information in a way that makes it findable and useful for providers, and medical librarians provide invaluable guidance and services to get the right information into the right hands at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WSU Medical Librarians\u2019 Important Roles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As an academic facility, the Health Sciences Library has a broader mandate: to also support the research conducted at WSU Health Sciences, Dyer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe scholarly conversation relies on having all of the relevant information on a research question before publishing new findings, and medical librarians are essential team members in collecting that information in a systematic and comprehensive way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are also essential to the curriculum and instruction teams in the health sciences colleges, Dyer said. Students in the field need extensive practice and guidance in finding and using new information throughout their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvidence-based practice requires practitioners to be able to find the best current information efficiently and effectively, every time, for every patient. Library search methods help them do that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s Challenges in Medical Librarianship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The information landscape is incredibly overwhelming, Dyer said. In addition, the ease of online searching means that people often overestimate their ability to find reliable information, often disregarding quality for speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMedical librarians face an uphill battle with many practitioners and researchers to demonstrate our deep need for well-indexed, organized, and curated information,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another challenge is the changing economic model for scholarly information, Dyer explained. An intense push for open-access publishing models has shifted publishers\u2019 revenue streams from subscribers to the suppliers of the information: researchers who want to publish their findings. Making access to information more democratic and equitable has created the opportunity for some individuals to establish \u201ca publishing underworld of predatory publications.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are publications that look like reputable titles but fail to provide the peer review and editorial practices that are standard and required to ensure that the information being published is reliable and high quality,\u201d she said. \u201cThe increasing challenge of identifying these low-quality publications makes the role of the medical librarian ever more important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the Future Holds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dyer predicts that medical librarians will become increasingly integrated into medical teams, both clinical and scholarly. Many teams already integrate librarians into their work, such as those who make rounds with clinicians and co-author on scholarly projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, the Health Sciences Library began offering an evidence synthesis service<\/a> for any WSU health sciences faculty member and student working toward publishable secondary research. The service allows users to add a librarian to their research teams who will guide the creation, implementation, and writeup of the literature search methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think this practice will increase, and those organizations that underestimated the role of the librarians will have to carve out new spaces to right the ship,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October is Medical Librarians Month, and Ann Dyer, director of the\u00a0WSU Health Sciences Library\u00a0in Spokane, recently spoke about her profession and the importance of medical librarianship to all health sciences fields, which rely on an incredible degree of trust between patients and their providers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40868,"featured_media":32142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[53],"wsuwp_university_location":[],"wsuwp_university_org":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32136"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32143,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32136\/revisions\/32143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32136"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_location?post=32136"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_org","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.wsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_org?post=32136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}