Trends in Academic Health Science Libraries: A Follow-Up to the MLA David A. Kronick Traveling Fellowship
By Michael R. Kronenfeld, Director
Learning Resource Center
A. T. Still University of the Health Sciences
Phone: 480-219-6091
Email: mkronenfeld@atsu.edu
As the 2003 recipient of the David A. Kronick Traveling Fellowship, I visited four academic health science libraries and one general academic library over the past six months. My original focus was to look at how academic medical libraries are working to integrate access to and use of Knowledge-Based Information (KBI) into their institution's curriculum and teaching. I ended up broadening my research as I discovered a number of trends indicating larger changes. I found that Academic Health Science Libraries (AHSLs) are in a period of transition away from being facility-oriented (the physical library building and contents) and print-oriented with a primary focus on their role as repositories of knowledge in print formats. I found a new model or paradigm emerging with a focus on their role as the center or 'nexus' for organizational access and use of knowledge, including Knowledge-Based Information (KBI), in all aspects of the Academic Health Center they serve, including research, education, and clinical service. The trends I identified are:
- A shifting of acquisitions expenditures from print collections to digital collections and resources.
- A shifting in the duties of professional staff from 'in the library' duties such as reference desk time and collection development time to 'out of the library' liaison activities such as curriculum development and faculty instructional support. Included in this is the decrease in the use of mediated services by patrons.
- A shifting of the use of library space to support the building of 'community' (for example several are putting in coffee shops), to provide more group work space with KBI access, and to provide an increasing number of computer stations, and support for the accessibility and use of these stations.
- A beginning examination for the development of a new generation of websites that not only provide easy access to the new collections of full-text KBI but provide improved means to manipulate the content to increase access to specific information rather than just to specific articles or monographs.
- A shifting of document delivery from paper to digital format.
- The emergence of new, digitally based, non-traditional KBI formats such as Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and UpToDate.
- A shifting within the institutions served to increasingly standardized and integrated computer-based operations, impacting all aspects of the institution.
Based on what I observed on these visits, I have written a paper discussing these trends and the new model I see emerging based upon them. PSRML recently funded a follow-up visit to the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library where I was able to present a draft of this paper and discussed what I had found with UCLA staff to validate my findings. I incorporated the input I received from that visit into my paper and have now submitted it for publication.
In both this research and in an article I co-authored which was published earlier this year1 on the changes hospital libraries have been undergoing in the last 10 years, I found medical libraries are developing a new vision or model of what they do and how they do it in the post NNLM/MEDLINE age, that has emerged with the rapid increase in access to digital KBI resources through the Internet and the Web. I hope my project and paper will help move forward the discussion of how medical libraries are evolving to better aid our institutions in achieving their mission in an increasing technological and knowledge/evidence based environment.
[Editor's Note: More information about the David A. Kronick Traveling Fellowship is available on the MLA website at http://www.mlanet.org/awards/grants/index.html.]