Development of a Tool to Measure the Cognitive Labor of Research in a Health Sciences and Consumer Health Library: Adaptation of the ‘Medical Decision-Making’ Calculator

ABSTRACT

Library staff identified the need for a tool to demonstrate the worth of the expertise and the return on investment of the library and its professional staff. The Medical Decision-Making tool was adapted to identify the purpose, the complexity (measure of cognitive labor), and the time required to conduct research. Two years of data show a majority of research requests (89%) are of low to moderate complexity, and require between 1 and 3 hours (53%). These metrics demonstrate the value of librarian expertise and provide a measure of the return on investment in professional library staff for organization leadership.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognitive labor
• complexity
• library statistics
• performance measurement
• return on investment
• research value