 Communicating
Differences and Similarities Among Teaching Librarians in
Undergraduate Medical Education: Results Gathered From the
Medical Literature Searching Skills Inventory
Authors : John J. Orriola ,
Shimberg Health Sciences Library, University of South Florida
; JoLinda Thompson , Himmelfarb Library, George
Washington University
Purpose: To quantify teaching librarians'
perceptions of the relative importance of the instructional
activities in which we engage regularly. Identifying these
values will provide criteria for prioritizing and standardizing
selected instructional activities.
Setting/Participants/Resources: The SCMLA funded this project
in 2002 to survey medical librarians as part of a larger, more
ambitious attempt to gather data on a national level. We selected
the SCMLA organization, a viable representative group, as a
starting point. In early 2004 we mailed the survey instrument
to the entire membership (346) and received close to 100 responses.
Brief Description: We created an instrument called the Medical
Literature Searching Skills Inventory in which we selected
35 items from a pool of skills, knowledge, and resources that
we typically address in library instruction in undergraduate
medical education. Each of these was evaluated on 4 criteria:
importance to lifelong learning, importance to the activity
of medical literature searching, mastery level that should
be attained while in med school and whether or not librarians
should be teaching the specific item.
Results/Outcomes : Initial observations call
attention to the differences among us with regard to what is
valuable to lifelong learning, what skills should not be taught
by librarians, and how we identify the importance of specific
instructional items with regard to level of mastery.
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