Building Confidence & Competency: Assessing and Addressing New Hospital Librarians’ Professional Development Needs

ABSTRACT

There is often a disparity for new hospital librarians between formal Library Information Science (LIS) education and the skills required for doing the job. To bridge the gap, new medical library professionals search out Medical Library Association (MLA) classes and webinars, find courses on the Internet, or link to National Library of Medicine (NLM) training. The MLA Hospital Library Caucus tasked an Education Task Force to ascertain what new librarians needed to help them in their early careers. The Task Force created a survey, which was sent to hospital librarians with less than 5 years’ experience. Respondents were asked to rate their top five duties and responsibilities and indicate with which they needed help. Using the results of the survey as a guide, the task force created a LibGuide for new hospital librarians.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• competencies
• education task force
• hospital
• librarians

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge Helen Ann Epstein, Informationist at Virtua Health, Monroe, NJ for her expertise and many contributions as a member of the Task Force

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).