The Search Principle blog

With our student librarians, we’ve been exploring evidence-based health care and librarian competencies in LIBR534 – Health information sources and services. We are teaching (and re-learning) the basic principles and frameworks for EBP. In that spirit, here is a resurrected and slightly modified top ten competencies in EBP circa 2010.

1. Articulate the five (5) steps of evidence-based clinical practice (EBCP)
2. Formulate good clinical questions
3. Understand the hierarchies of evidence from the anecdote to gold standard (RCT)
4. Search by clinical domain ie. diagnosis, etiology, prognosis, qualitative, therapy
5. Describe expert role(s) assumed by librarians in evidence-based practice
6. Teaching ability. Knowledge of learning styles, sources, strategies and filters
7. Be familiar with basic research, methodologies, statistics and assessment
8. Engage in critical appraisal and reflective practices
9. Understand the systematic review process and exhaustive searching
10. Assume expert searching roles for database searching (MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, Web of Science, PSYCINFO, ERIC, etc.); pre-appraised sources (Cochrane and related tools); and grey literature (Google, Yahoo, Scirus and other open search tools).

See also: Top Ten Reference Competencies in the Health Sciences

I created this Jeopardy quiz on EBM searching at Jeopardylabs. Simple and fun – the website helps you build a Jeopardy game board without using Power Point. Search Jeopardy games created by others. You can’t edit them – but you might find a game that fits your needs.

“Before we begin, Dean, I’d like to give readers a bit of background as to who you are and why they should know about you. You are already well known and admired by medical and sci/tech librarians, by those in the Open Access community, and by those interested in the subject of search.  But I would like to introduce you to the wider health technology and Open Science communities given your ability to recognize important technologies, tools and trends in the area of scientific and scholarly communication and your skill in explaining their use and recognizing their potential for many tasks. You are an educator and explicator supreme.”

Hope Leman, Significant Science, 1 February 2010 http://significantscience.com/2010/02/01/the-dean-of-social-media-in-medicine-a-talk-with-dean-giustini/

The University of British Columbia Medical Journal (UBCMJ) <http://www.ubcmj.com> is a student-run academic journal with a goal to engage students in dialogue in medicine. Our scope ranges from original research and review articles in medicine to medical trends, clinical reports, elective reports and commentaries in the principles and practice of medicine. We strive to maintain a high level of integrity and accuracy in our work, to encourage collaborative production and cross-disciplinary communication, and to stimulate critical and independent thinking. We have a goal of establishing ourselves as one of the leading student-run publications in Canada and internationally, and expect high quality from our submissions. We accept submissions in all areas of medicine, including but not limited to research, reviews, case reports, medical history, ethics, medical anthropology, epidemiology, public health, and international health.

• UBC Library Marc record for the journal
• HLWIKI Canada entry for “University of British Columbia Medical Journal (UBCMJ)“

This 36pg. handout is to accompany the ppts slides. Enjoy! ~Dean

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In an effort to share some of the teaching materials from the BCLA workshop on answering health and medical questions, here is one of the updated handouts which I will also share with LIBR534 student librarians. Have a good weekend ~Dean

Note: download the handout in pdf to take advantage of the ‘live’ embedded links. ~Dean

“…If librarians are going to continue being relevant in the age of Google and Google Scholar, they need to move beyond the document and facilitate access to the increasing amounts of data that is being made available on the web. …” (Stuart, 2010)

Data management is the process of ensuring the accuracy, currency, storage, security and accessibility of data sets and other digital files in perpetuity. Its archival element is often referred to as data curation. In fulfilling some of their archival and preservation responsibilities, academic libraries should take greater responsibility for the overall coordination of data management in the future, and consider the long-term institutional needs of faculty members and researchers who generate data. Will this data be available for analysis by other researchers? Can it be using for other data mining purposes?

What do we mean by research data and data management? Research data is often defined as the information (e.g. data sets, microarray, numerical data, clinical trial information, textual records, images, sound, etc.) generated or used as quantitative evidence in primary research. This research data is distinguished by the fact that it is accepted by the research community as a means to validate research findings, observations and hypotheses. According to CARL/ABRC, the majority of research data produced by academic institutions in Canada is not being properly or systematically archived in repositories. This suggests that a more concerted effort is needed to bring together experts at Canadian academic institutions to initiate data management projects. One recent study conducted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) found that only 3 Canadian organizations out of 110 systematically archived data in repositories and of those all were archived in the United States. Put simply, research data generated in higher education in Canada is not managed in any coherent manner and much of this information is under-utilized or inaccessible for knowledge-creation purposes. While some disciplines and research areas have institutional, national and international supports in place for data management, this support is neither coordinated nor comprehensive.