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Clinical librarianship in the UK: temporary trend or permanent profession? Part I: a review of the role of the clinical librarian.

journal contribution
posted on 2013-03-08, 14:16 authored by Sally J.E. Sargeant, Janet Harrison
BACKGROUND: This paper is the first of a two-part series of articles presenting the role of the clinical librarian (CL) in the UK today. It situates the CL concept historically, and specifically reports the findings from a study in 2002 (Skinner, The Role of the Clinical Librarian in the UK. MSc Dissertation. Loughborough University: Department of Information Science). RELEVANCE: The impetus for the 2002 study was the awareness of an increase in job advertisements within the NHS for roles seeking to enhance the practice of evidence-based medicine, which included elements of clinical librarianship. Therefore the research was undertaken to establish whether this increase was coincidental, or the beginning of a new professional role for librarians. METHODS: A content analysis of CL job advertisements, examining job titles and duties was undertaken. Twenty-three advertisements were scrutinized, and these results are presented here. As a complementary investigation, a postal questionnaire was sent to a sample of practising CLs in the UK. RESULTS: Several duties can be classified as core to the role of the CL. However there is a great diversity of duties attached to this core, reflecting an absence of nationally accepted practice. CONCLUSION: Further work was necessary to assess current practice and how clinical librarianship can continue to grow at local and national levels. This is addressed in Part Two of this series.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Information Science

Citation

SARGEANT, S.J.E. and HARRISON, J., 2004. Clinical librarianship in the UK: temporary trend or permanent profession? Part I: a review of the role of the clinical librarian. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 21 (3), pp. 173 - 181.

Publisher

© Health Libraries Group

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publication date

2004

Notes

Closed Access. This article was published in the Health Information and Libraries Journal [© Health Libraries Group] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2004.00510.x

ISSN

1471-1834

Language

  • en