Essential Services of Clinical Librarians in Academic and Health Care Settings: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive summary of clinical librarian service models in the US, Canada, and the UK from a cross-sectional study. An online survey received 182 responses from clinical librarians in hospital (62%), academic (26%), and other (10%) libraries. These clinical librarians shared the services they provide, patrons they work with, and their perceptions of the value they add to clinical environments. Overall, this study quantifies the services offered most frequently by clinical librarians, the services felt to be most valuable, and the variety of health care clientele whom clinical librarians serve. These findings have implications for current clinical librarians, libraries and health care institutions, and for those who may become clinical librarians in the future.

Keywords:

• Clinical librarians
• health sciences librarianship
• hospital librarians

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the librarians who responded to the 2018 survey; our UNC-Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library co-workers who pilot-tested the survey and provided pre-submission peer review; Amelea Kim for her assistance with the Qualtrics survey design, data extraction, and the initial poster design; and the Medical Library Association for accepting the preliminary results of this study as a research poster at the 2018 Annual Meeting.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no relevant financial interests or benefits to disclose.

Data availability statement

The poster presented at MLA 2018 (https://doi.org/10.17615/0d7a-6180) is available in an online institutional repository at https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/scholarly_works/cf95jd382.

The dataset and appendix are available in an online institutional repository at https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/data_sets/kd17d080g. To use the data associated with this publication for research purposes, contact the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Carlson

Rebecca Carlson, MLS, AHIP ([email protected]) is a Health Sciences Librarian and Liaison to the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Health Sciences Library, 335 S. Columbia St CB 7585, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

Sarah Towner Wright

Sarah Towner Wright, MLS ([email protected]) is the Head of Clinical and Statewide Engagement and Liaison to the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Health Sciences Library, 335 S. Columbia St CB 7585, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.