professionals and, thus, to cost savings and health-care benefits” (p. 5). Few
others on a campus or in a healthcare institution know as much about informa-
tion structure, storage, retrieval, and evaluation as librarians do. Most academic
libraries have subject-specialty librarians for specific disciplines, and at health
sciences libraries, new roles are emerging that make librarians more specialized
(Cooper & Crum, 2013). Whereas reference desk inquiries are appropriate for
general questions, an appointment with a subject-specialty librarian is the best
way to obtain specific information in a shorter amount of time.
Impactful use of librarians and library resources isn’t limited to academic study.
In 1992, hospital librarians in Rochester, New York, initiated what has since
become known as “The Rochester Study” in their quest to assess whether or
not having a hospital library impacts patient care. “It demonstrated that in
the eyes of the information users (in this case, physicians) that library services
were valued and that the provided information was seen as making a positive
difference in patient care. The Rochester study has been heavily cited, achieving
a prominent influence in the field, not only among librarians, but also in the
medical literature.” (Dunn, Brewer, Marshall, & Sollenberger, 2009, p. 308)
Systematic reviews and other studies, such as “The Health Information Literacy
Project,” continue to consider and evaluate the value of library use and resources
in positively influencing patient care.
To create an EBP, nurses must be aware of information retrieval options.
Hospitals often support library resources and a librarian. Academic or health
sciences libraries, especially at state-funded institutions, may allow community
members access to their holdings. Academic libraries are especially useful
because they have strong collections in the scholarly literature, while public
libraries have more consumer-oriented materials.Looking at the Structure of Sources
When information sources are organized using basic principles of consistent
record formatting and field labels, searchers can rely on finding similar infor-
mation each time they perform the same search, even if new information has
been added to the system. For example, if the keyword anxiety is entered into
a database, the searcher would expect the search to yield information such
as author, title of article, year of publication, and the abstract each time the
keyword is entered. Each time anxiety is entered, the same sources should be
seen. If any new sources have been added to the database since the previous
search, these should also appear.
Considering familiar organizational structures of sources will help in un-
derstanding more complex systems. Perhaps the first organizational system
you ever learned was the alphabet. Children in kindergarten learn to line up in
alphabetical order according to their last names. They do not line up according104 CHAPTER 4 Finding Sources of Evidence