Monday, June 8, 2009

EBM Survey Results

Last year, we surveyed practicing medical librarians related to their roles in supporting and enhancing evidence-based medicine (EBM) practice and here are the preliminary results on the 11 multiple choice questions. We got a total of 596 valid responses to the survey questions with 51 % coming from hospital libraries, 42% from academic libraries, and 7% from special libraries. Some survey result highlights:
  • The most frequently reported role is to provide EBM research to users, followed by teaching EBM, and contributing to EBM initiatives in their institutions.
  • Hospital librarians are most active in providing EBM research.
  • Academic librarians are most active in teaching EBM.
  • Attending journal clubs, morning reports, and medical rounds is not a popular responsibility among medical librarians.
The survey results were presented at the Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS) 2009 Conference and published in the conference proceedings. Here is the presentation:

Our next step will be looking into librarians' comments to get some idea about what they really thought about their EBM roles.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Hawaii Notes and Pictures

Going to MLA Annual Conferences has been part of my professional activities since 2004. This year like previous years, MLA sparkled lots of excitement and ideas. Most important of all, I gave a presentation entitled "Infusing Information Literacy Skills by Researching 'Never Events' at the conference. Without the financial support from the LISTEN project, I might not have been in the conference.

As you know, I always have lots of pictures from the Conference and pictures about Hawaii.

The best and the outstanding among us

The very exciting thing to do in Hawaii was to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.

Swimming with fishes

The most touching event was to watch the Lantern Floating Hawaii on the Memorial Day at the AlA Moana Beach Park.

Lantern Floating Hawaii 2009

My first time inside a submarine and saw up-close magic of Hawaii's undersea world.

Undersea world

Hawaii features in ABC Stores that are more than churches.

ABC Store for tourists

The Big Island Tour took us to the Black Sand Beach.

Black sand --"Chicken of the Sea"

Monkey pod trees are everywhere in Hawaii. I've never seen so magnificent banyan trees there.

Over 100 year-old banyan tree

Monkey pod tree

Walking and swimming along Waikiki Beach felt like in paradise.

By the beach

I really enjoyed shooting sunset pictures along the beaches.

Sunset at sea

This is a place worth visiting again! I know I will have a waterproof camera case when I revisit Hawaii some day.