2000 SC/MLA Annual Meeting Presentations


Danny O'Neal/Linda Musante- Abstract 2003

Setting a Course for the Maiden Voyage: Measuring the Effect of a Library Training Module on First Year Medical Students
Danny O'Neal - Shimberg Health Sciences Library, University of South Florida
Linda Musante, PhD - Professor of Psychology, University of Tampa

Purpose: Evaluate the effect of instruction on using library resources in first year medical students.

Setting/subjects: College of Medicine. First year medical students.

Methodology: Survey; Pretest and Posttest to instructional training; Self-evaluation. For each of the past two years, first year medical students participated in a three-week program taught by the College of Medicine faculty. The element of the program investigated in this study was an instructional module on using library resources. To assess the effectiveness of the library module, students were first given a self- assessment survey as a pretest to measure their comfort and skill levels in using a health sciences library and online resources. The pretest was administered during the first ten minutes of the first day of the program prior to exposure to the module. The library training module was then presented over the next two weeks. The survey was again administered as a posttest to measure the change in comfort and skill levels

Results: Results reveal that for both years, students reported significant improvement in comfort and skill levels using the medical library and its online resources. Participants reported improvement in medical library research skills and their comfort level with using medical library online catalog and information resources. They also improved their knowledge of online search strategies and techniques, searching online medical databases and information resources, using the medical library catalog, and others.

Discussion/conclusion: We have demonstrated that the instructional module produces positive results. These results validate the importance of the library's role in the medical curriculum and indicate possible applications to other curricula within the Colleges of the Health Sciences, i.e. Colleges of Nursing and the College of Public Health.