Hospital Library Caucus: Guidance for Healthcare Administrators

Competency 1: Health Information Leadership & Management - A Hospital Librarian:

• Manages personnel, time, budget, facilities, and technology to meet institutional goals,
• Negotiates with vendors on best prices and content for their institution,
• Participates in institutional management and leadership activities,
• Participates in hospital and professional committees,
• Effectively promotes the value of the library - its staff, programs, resources, and services,
• Collaborates with other professionals to improve access to health care information.

Competency 2: Information Services - A Hospital Librarian:

• Locates, evaluates, synthesizes, and delivers authoritative information in response to inquiries,
• Finds information to answer questions at the point of need,
• Strives to be an expert in assessing information needs and delivering information in a format and means of delivery best suited to those making requests,
• Curates and makes accessible, within budget constraints, bioscience, clinical, and health information data, information, and knowledge,
• Develops a customized collection to support medical and patient care activities.
• Assists researchers through data curation

Competency 3: Education & Instructs - A Hospital Librarian:

• Instructs others in the skills of bioscience, clinical, and health information literacy, 
• Enables their local user community to be self-sufficient in locating clinical information,
• Knows how to use available library resources,
• Critically appraises research articles.

Competency 4: Evidence-Based Practice & Research - A Hospital Librarian:

• Promotes and teaches evidence-based medicine skills,
• Evaluates research studies,
• Uses research to improve practice,
• Assists and supports all aspects of the research process, i.e., Patient Safety, Quality Improvement, Magnet, and Hospital-specific research endeavors,
• Communicates research results,
• Stays current with new research methodologies (e.g., outcomes research, data mining).

Adapted from:  Medical Library Association. Professional competencies [Internet]. Chicago: The Association; [cited 2022 Feb 3]. <https://www.mlanet.org/page/test-competencies >.

Patient Care Focused

• A librarian is committed to excellence in patient care, establishing relationships and interactions with the Patient Care Team and informing them of the librarian’s skills and the library’s programs and services.
• A librarian builds library collections (print and/or digital) to support topics important to the patient care mission of the Hospital.
• A librarian is a skilled searcher of PubMed and other bibliographic databases needed to identify evidence-based literature.
• A librarian establishes current awareness profiles for topics important to patrons and the mission of the Hospital.
• A librarian finds and fills documents not available in the local collection using DOCLINE or other interlibrary loan systems in a timely and cost-effective manner.
• A library staff provides reference, research, and document retrieval services for all members of the hospital community.
• A librarian participates with hospital-wide committees, such as Education, IRB, Interprofessional Research Council, GME, or Leadership.
• A librarian supports evidence-based clinical research and may participate with clinical teams at Morning Report, Bedside Rounds, or Grand Rounds.
• In some libraries, a librarian will provide professional recommendations for vetted consumer health resources and websites, as needed to support patient and family information requests.

Role of the Hospital Librarian in Research:

Basic

Monitor and assess locally available information resources for ongoing relevance to local research programs and emerging practice and research areas.

Guidance and consultation with literature searches.

• Knowledge of basic clinical medicine databases, e.g., PubMed, CINAHL.
• Guidance in using advanced search techniques and features/tools.
• Knowledge of use of search filters and alerts in those databases.
• Awareness of predatory and unreliable information sources.
• Understanding of basic Evidence Based Practice terms and concepts.

Support for writing and publishing

• Familiarity with resources to support those writing research papers.
• Provides writing and presentation tools for internal and external documents.
• Familiarity with current Copyright regulations and guidelines as they relate to

publishing, author rights, re-use, and interlibrary loans.

Advanced (in addition to the above)

Guidance and consultation with literature searches and systematic reviews

• Expertise in use of advanced clinical medicine databases, e.g., Cochrane databases, ECRI, gray literature sources, and pre-print servers.

• Support and guidance for creating systematic reviews.
  • Knowledge of tools (e.g., Covidence) to support systematic reviews.
  • Familiarity with PROSPERO and core sources for systematic reviews (e.g., Cochrane, Briggs)

• Understanding different review types and methodologies.

Support for writing and publishing

• Familiarity with Open Access publishing and resources that support it (DOAJ, SHERPA/ROMEO, etc.)

• Ability to teach use of supported bibliographic management tools (EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, etc.)
• Ability to manipulate outputs: reference lists, in-manuscript citations, etc.
• Familiarity with resources (JANE, JCR, etc.) for identifying appropriate journals for manuscript submission
• Ability to identify manuscript submission and formatting requirements. 
• Support compliance with NIH Public Access Policy.
• Understanding bibliometrics and citation analysis, familiarity with common metrics (h-index, impact factor, etc.). 

Support for research data management

• Construction of research data management plans.
• Organizing research protocols, data, and other objects and artifacts.
• Data curation advice for archiving and repository selection
• Creation of data citations to meet publication and/or funder requirements. 

Understanding of research protocols and study types, including rules and regulations around human subjects research

• Familiarity with IRB (Institutional Review Board) and IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) processes
• Certification in human subjects research (CITI Training)

Basic

• Respond to information inquiries.
• Provide access to a core collection of electronic subscriptions that encompasses the institution’s patient care needs.
• Provide document delivery services to obtain requested information.

Advanced (in addition to the above)

• Provide access to a collection consisting of a variety of electronic journals, books, and databases supporting all the institution’s disciplines and areas of focus.
• Provide instruction and training on the use of tools and methods to facilitate Evidence-Based Practice, Shared Governance, Patient Education and Consumer Health initiatives.  
• Support the scholarly and educational activities of students, physicians, nurses and patient caregivers who are educating and training the next generation of professionals.
• Monitor and assist with the scholarly output of hospital staff, including but not limited to authored materials, scholarly productivity tools, educational programs, guidelines, and care plans.

“Facilities” refers to a combination of physical and digital resources, depending on the needs of your institution.

• Technical infrastructure for listing and providing resources both on-site and remotely.
• Library web page or portal with, at minimum, a list of available health sciences electronic resources and library staff contact information.
• Space for small group huddles, reference consultations, or any exchange of sensitive or confidential information related to patient care.
• Mechanisms to protect privacy regarding health information requests.
• Systems that enable and expedite the delivery of full-text information.
• Pathways to resources to simplify access to reliable health information via the intra/internet, establishing permalinks (Open URLs), and collaborating with hospital IT on authentication access methods.