The Informationist: Ten Years Later

Abstract

The article explores the last 10 years of literature relating to Davidoff and Florance's informationist concept. An informationist provides many of the same services as a medical librarian, is a permanent member of the clinical team, and resides on the clinical floors. The author explores the job functions of the informationist and examines whether this service has come to fruition. The author argues that the informationist service can only be fully realized in large academic health sciences libraries, large teaching hospitals, and medical research organizations such as the National Institutes of Health. To facilitate this argument, a questionnaire was distributed to Health Sciences Library listservs; CANMEDLIB and MEDLIB-L. Three hundred ninety respondents completed the questionnaire. The author concludes that there is an inconsistency in the job functions of the informationist service and their academic background. Lastly, the author argues that informationists provide many of the same duties of the medical librarian.

Keywords:

• clinical medical librarian
• clinical medical librarianship
• CML
• informationist
• marketing
• medical libraries
• outreach