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Source publication
Today’s healthcare rely on a basis of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and in modern healthcare there are demands for rational decision-making about new methods, technology and treatments. HTA (Health Technology Assessment) supports decision-making in healthcare and in this study we turn to documentary practices of hospital librarians in HTA, as well...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... a textbox has been filled out with the question being submitted, the user is asked to specify what category the user belongs to (e.g., the head of a unit, some other leading function, or a regular employee). Then, the user is asked to "clarify the question by thinking PICO" (see figure 1). When a question has been nominated from the clinical practice, the librarians start with an initial searching, or scoping searching, often in the database PUBMED to see if there is any available scientific literature on the subject to be able to answer the nominated question. ...
Context 2
... a textbox has been filled out with the question being submitted, the user is asked to specify what category the user belongs to (e.g., the head of a unit, some other leading function, or a regular employee). Then, the user is asked to "clarify the question by thinking PICO" (see figure 1). When a question has been nominated from the clinical practice, the librarians start with an initial searching, or scoping searching, often in the database PUBMED to see if there is any available scientific literature on the subject to be able to answer the nominated question. ...
Citations
... Increasingly, librarians interact with healthcare professionals and collaborate with researchers in research groups (Murphy et al., 2022). Hospital librarians also work together with medical doctors and methodological experts in health technology assessment (HTA), where evidence-based information is valued and treatments recommended (Ahlryd and Hanell, 2021). Most hospital libraries also maintain library services for patients, as well as the public. ...
... Since the HTA-unit normally compiles comprehensive and rigorously assessed HTAreports, where trained librarians and medical experts together provide a systematic review of research and offer recommendations to clinicians, reports from the HTA-unit come with certain expectations (see Ahlryd and Hanell, 2021). As the work of the HTA-unit shifted from comprehensive and rigorous HTA-reports to weekly updates on new scientific publications, it was crucial to describe the type of report and how the credibility could be assessed. ...
Purpose
The challenges to healthcare caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced hospital librarians to develop their abilities to cope with change and crises, both on a social level and an organisational level. The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about how hospital librarians developed library services during the pandemic and how these changes contributed to building information resilience in the healthcare organisation. This paper also seeks to explore how resilience theory, and specifically the concept information resilience, can be used within library and information science (in LIS) to investigate resilience in the library sector.
Design/methodology/approach
Nine semi-structured interviews with librarians were conducted at four different hospital libraries in four different regions in Sweden between March and May 2022. The empirical material was analysed through an interaction between the tzheoretical perspective and the empirical material through a thematic analysis. In each theme, specific resilience resources are identified and analysed as components of the information resilience developed by hospital librarians.
Findings
The results show that hospital librarians contribute to several different information resilience resources, which support information resilience in the healthcare organisation. Three aspects characterize the qualities of resilience resources: access, flexibility, and collaboration. The findings suggest that the framework for analysing information resilience used in this study is well suited for studying the resilience of libraries from both organisational and informational aspects.
Originality/value
The analysis of information resilience on an organisational level presents a novel way to study resilience in the library sector.
Demands for an evidence-based healthcare increase and today all medical decisions are to be based on scientific results. The evidence-based healthcare means that hospital librarians have a stronger role as mediators of scientific information. The evidence-based movement implies a positivistic epistemological view that influences the information literacy practices. This study focuses how the information literacy practices of hospital librarians in Sweden are constructed and enacted in relation to different epistemological perspectives in healthcare. The analysis is structured around three identified practices of hospital librarians where information work is performed: the clinical practices, the information seeking practices and the health technology assessment (HTA)-practice. In these practices, different epistemological perspectives are present, which affects the information literacy practices of hospital librarians. There is a movement from the holistic knowledge connected to the clinical practices, via specialized knowledge and generic instructions in the information seeking practices, to the most specialized knowledge and positivistic perspective in the HTA-practice.