Evaluation of Hospital Libraries Based on the Medical Library Association’s (MLA’s) Standards: A Study from Iran

ABSTRACT

Access to up-to-date information in the medical profession is crucial and the use of this information significantly impacts the diagnosis and prevention of diseases and decision on therapeutic approaches. Hospital libraries assist hospitals in conducting their main mission more efficiently. This study aimed to investigate the status of five Iranian hospital libraries in performing these roles and tasks according to standards for hospital libraries. The research method is a survey. A checklist was used to collect data. This checklist was prepared based on eleven standards published by the Hospital Libraries Section (HLS) of the Medical Library Association (MLA). The findings of this research showed that the status of those hospital libraries studied is not favorable in the third and tenth standards. As a result, hospital managers need to pay special attention to these two standards, which are related to human resources and library space.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospital libraries
• librarians
• Medical Library Association
• standards

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by Vice-chancellor for Research and Technology, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences (No.9707104006) and was conducted after approval of the proposal by the University Ethics Committee. It received the ethics code (IR.UMSHA.REC.1397.443) from Hamadan University of Medical Sciences.