Learning and Teaching Retrospective
‘Information skills training is such a significant feature of our professional role that it might seem perverse, even heretical, to question its value.’1
Background
Librarians and information professionals have been involved (to a greater or lesser degree) in learning and teaching for many years, but when Health Libraries Review (HLR) was first published in 1984, few would have regarded this as a ‘significant feature of our professional role’. The following is a brief review of HLR/HILJ's contribution to learning and teaching, reflecting on developments in information technology, professional education and evidence-based practice which have influenced the changing perception of the professional role of librarians as teachers.
Impact of new technology
One of the first articles on learning and teaching to appear in HLR describes a British Library research project on library orientation and training for preclinical medical students, undertaken in 1985.2 A survey of medical school librarians in the UK elicited an 85% response rate. It found that all libraries offered a training programme which included instruction on the use of the ‘most important’ abstracting and indexing journals but only one library covered online information retrieval skills. Although online searching was available in several libraries by this time, mediated searching by library staff was the norm in a service that charged by the minute or by the number of citations retrieved.
When medline first became available on CD-ROM it was seen as a possible tool to teach end users about searching skills before letting them loose on expensive online systems.3 By 1990, CD-ROMs were having greater impact on user education.4 Questions were being asked about the most efficient method of teaching: in groups or one-to-one? In an editorial entitled, ‘Databases free at the point of use: a unique opportunity for academics and students’, Derek Law suggests that the role of librarian was changing to ‘information broker and information skills teacher to the masses’.5
Professional education
Developing in parallel with new technology have been the dramatic changes in the education of health-care professionals. In 1986 the UK Central Council for Nursing and Midwifery (UKCC) endorsed the report Project 20006 which had a profound effect on nursing library services. A few years later, Thompson and Bullimore recommended that librarians should learn teaching skills to cope with the additional role they were now expected to play in teaching both library and study skills in formal lectures.7 By 1993, it was being suggested that nursing librarians should be involved in curriculum planning.8 In 1996 a theme issue of HLR focused on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in medical education.9 The PBL curricula resulted not only in increased use of health-care libraries, but also in the requirement for librarians to provide educational programmes to support this. The issue includes two articles which demonstrate the changing role of librarians as teachers in Sweden10 and in the UK.11 The former is the subject of a practitioner's commentary in this 25th anniversary issue.
Evidence based practice
With the advent of evidence-based practice (see Using Evidence in Practice feature in this issue) it did not take long for HLR to realize the predicted significance for health-care librarians of this new paradigm for medical practice. Within a short time HLR was publishing case studies on the practice of training health-care professionals in information skills for evidence-based practice.12,13 In a personal view article, John Lancaster recognized the important role health librarians had assumed in the development of evidence-based practice, but urged the profession to continue to change and contribute more by, for example, gaining the formal teaching qualifications of academic staff in higher education.14
Following the first Evidence-based Librarianship Conference in Sheffield in 2001, HILJ published a key paper on practical steps for the implementation of this new concept.15 Librarians are now encouraged to practise their profession in an evidence-based manner by asking well-structured questions assigned to ‘domains’. The six domains within which librarians work, include the domain of Education: ‘finding teaching methods and strategies to educate users about library resources and how to improve their research skills’.15 The development of evidence-based library and information practice has led the way for a more evaluative approach to the teaching of information skills or information literacy, as it is now known, and in the last 6 years alone HILJ has published more than 30 articles evaluating the impact of training courses led by librarians. Of particular note are the randomized controlled trial,16 systematic reviews17,18 and critical appraisal on the effectiveness of training health professionals in literature searching skills.19 Further indication that learning and teaching is an important domain for evidence-based practice is the fact that several of the most read or most cited1,20,21 articles on HILJ's website concern the evaluation of training for information literacy.
Pedagogy
The main lessons learned from an information skills training programme for a mental health trust, were that
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‘design of a library skills training programme should be informed, not just by the evidence of what has worked for other health library trainers, but also by the evidence from educational literature on the approaches that should be used for adult learners.’22
To meet this need, a column on Learning and Teaching became a regular feature of HILJ from 2003, edited first by Nicky Whitsed and, more recently, by myself (from 2007 onwards). Over the course of a few years a wide variety of topics relating to pedagogy have been introduced through the column, including the theory of constructivism,23 learning outcomes,24 e-learning,25–27 e-portfolios,28 accessibility29 and assessment.30 The impact of online learning or e-learning on the teaching of library and information skills has been significant and in 2005 HILJ issued a supplement devoted entirely to supporting e-learning in healthcare edited by Philippa Levy.31
Conclusion
Health librarians have supported the education and training of library users for many years. A brief review of the first 25 years of HLR/HILJ highlights a wealth of contributions on learning and teaching and how our profession has responded in a very positive way to an exciting and demanding role to ensure greater access to the knowledge base of health care. To return to our quotation at the beginning of this review, the evidence in HLR/HILJ clearly affirms that information skills training is indeed a significant feature of our professional role.1
Conflicts of interest
MESF has declared no conflicts.
