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Objectives: This paper describes a survey-based evaluation of the five-year old Liaison Librarian Program at the University of Florida.

Methods: Liaison librarians, faculty, students, staff, residents, and post-doctoral associates were queried via Web-based surveys. Questions addressed client and liaison perspectives on a variety of issues, including program and service awareness and usage, client-library relations and communication, client support for the program, and liaison workload.

Results: Approximately 43% of the 323 client respondents were aware of liaison services; 72% (n = 163) of these clients had had contact with their liaison. Ninety-five percent (n = 101) of faculty and students who reported contact with their liaison supported the continuation of the program. Liaison services were used by a greater percentage of faculty than students, although they had similar patterns of usage and reported the same “traditional” services to be most important. Liaisons indicated that communications with clients had increased, the reputation of the library was enhanced, and their workloads had increased as a result of the Liaison Librarian Program.

Conclusions and Recommendations: Survey results suggest that the Liaison Librarian Program has a core set of clients who use and highly value the services provided by liaisons. Recommendations addressing workload, training, marketing, and administrative support are provided.

Purpose: The paper reviews and analyzes the evolution of the open access (OA) publishing movement and its impact on the traditional scholarly publishing model.

Procedures: A literature survey and analysis of definitions of OA, problems with the current publishing model, historical developments, funding agency responses, stakeholder viewpoints, and implications for scientific libraries and publishing are performed.

Findings: The Internet's transformation of information access has fueled interest in reshaping what many see as a dysfunctional, high-cost system of scholarly publishing. For years, librarians alone advocated for change, until relatively recently when interest in OA and related initiatives spread to the scientific community, governmental groups, funding agencies, publishers, and the general public.

Conclusions: Most stakeholders acknowledge that change in the publishing landscape is inevitable, but heated debate continues over what form this transformation will take. The most frequently discussed remedies for the troubled current system are the “green” road (self-archiving articles published in non-OA journals) and the “gold” road (publishing in OA journals). Both movements will likely intensify, with a multiplicity of models and initiatives coexisting for some time.

An appropriate balance between teaching, scholarship, and service is important for a faculty member to have a satisfying and successful career. The relative emphasis on each area normally changes during the course of a career. Although some level of scholarly output is an ongoing and fundamental expectation of all faculty members, this activity is too often given low priority, particularly among faculty members in practice areas who may have a minimal background in research and large demands on their time for teaching and clinical service. Addressing this issue requires establishing a shared commitment between administrators and faculty members, as well as identifying or developing education programs that will ensure research competence for practice faculty members. This paper provides insights into the role that scholarship and research should have for all pharmacy faculty members and provides suggestions for how to better advance this critical component within academic pharmacy.

In 2002, a regional consortium was created for schools and colleges of pharmacy in Georgia and Alabama to assist experiential education faculty and staff members in streamlining administrative processes, providing required preceptor development, establishing a professional network, and conducting scholarly endeavors. Five schools and colleges of pharmacy with many shared experiential practice sites formed a consortium to help experiential faculty and staff members identify, discuss, and solve common experience program issues and challenges. During its 5 years in existence, the Southeastern Pharmacy Experiential Education Consortium has coordinated experiential schedules, developed and implemented uniform evaluation tools, coordinated site and preceptor development activities, established a work group for educational research and scholarship, and provided opportunities for networking and professional development. Several consortium members have received national recognition for their individual experiential education accomplishments. Through the activities of a regional consortium, members have successfully developed programs and initiatives that have streamlined administrative processes and have the potential to improve overall quality of experiential education programs. Professionally, consortium activities have resulted in 5 national presentations.

Question:

What type of liaison program would best utilize both librarians and other library staff to effectively promote library services and resources to campus departments?

Setting:

The case is an academic medical center library serving a large, diverse campus.

Methods:

The library implemented a “facilitator model” program to provide personalized service to targeted clients that allowed for maximum staff participation with limited subject familiarity. To determine success, details of liaison-contact interactions and results of liaison and department surveys were reviewed.

Results:

Liaisons successfully recorded 595 interactions during the program's first 10 months of existence. A significant majority of departmental contact persons (82.5%) indicated they were aware of the liaison program, and 75% indicated they preferred email communication.

Conclusion:

The “facilitator model” provides a well-defined structure for assigning liaisons to departments or groups; however, training is essential to ensure that liaisons are able to communicate effectively with their clients.

Objective: An expert consensus on the future of the library as place was developed to assist health sciences librarians in designing new library spaces.

Method: An expert panel of health sciences librarians, building consultants, architects, and information technologists was asked to reflect on the likelihood, desirability, timing, and impact on building design of more than seventy possible changes in the use of library space.

Results: An expert consensus predicted that the roles librarians play and the way libraries are used will substantially change. These changes come in response to changes in technology, scholarly communication, learning environments, and the health care economy.

Conclusions: How health sciences library space is used will be far less consistent by 2015, as space becomes more tailored to institutional needs. However, the manner in which health sciences libraries develop and deliver services and collections will drastically change in the next decade. Libraries will continue to exist and will provide support for knowledge management and clinical trials, provide access to digital materials, and play a host of other roles that will enable libraries to emerge as institutional change agents.

Welch Medical Library has explored new roles for librarians in knowledge management instruction programs throughout the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing curricula. These programs have created roles for library staff as both instructors and knowledge management experts. By fostering strong communication and attention to quality instruction, librarians achieved their vision of a program in knowledge management integrated into the curriculum, where they are partners working with nursing faculty to define the students' knowledge management needs and decide how these needs can be met.

Purpose: The paper describes patterns of electronic journal usage in health sciences libraries during the past decade.

Method: The paper presents a case study, documenting the pattern of acquisition, management, and usage at the Louis Calder Memorial Library of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Results: Health sciences journals were early to offer electronic alternatives to print. As a result, health sciences libraries, their patrons, and the public at large were early to embrace the new versions and continue to embrace the significant changes in scholarly communication they enable. Although the patterns of electronic journals among health sciences libraries and other special and academic libraries have similarities, they also have differences. Broad studies of electronic journals in non–health sciences libraries have been published, but a retrospective review of electronic journals in health sciences libraries has not.

Objective:

The authors developed an elective course to assist students in (1) understanding the changing nature of scholarly communication and online publishing, (2) identifying resources and strategies for searching current best evidence, and (3) demonstrating effective communication of information.

Setting:

The course took place in a medical school in the Southwest.

Participants:

Second- and third-year medical students participated in the course.

Intervention:

A pass-fail, undergraduate-level elective was first offered October to December 2006. This 7.5 hour course, developed and co-taught by 2 health sciences library faculty, consisted of hands-on exercises, small group discussion, and didactic lecture.

Conclusion:

Presenting a medical school elective is one possible outlet for intensive bibliographic instruction. Illustrating the flow of information from creation to management and presentation affords students an opportunity to understand information in context. This elective has been consistently ranked very high in student evaluations and led to new and expanded teaching opportunities.

Background

The long-term impact of longitudinal faculty development programs (FDPs) is not well understood.

Objective

To follow up past participants in the Johns Hopkins Faculty Development Program in Teaching Skills and members of a comparison group in an effort to describe the long-term impact of the program.

Design and Participants

In July 2002, we surveyed all 242 participants in the program from 1987 through 2000, and 121 members of a comparison group selected by participants as they entered the program from 1988 through 1995.

Measurements

Professional characteristics, scholarly activity, teaching activity, teaching proficiency, and teaching behaviors.

Results

Two hundred participants (83%) and 99 nonparticipants (82%) responded. When participants and nonparticipants from 1988 to 1995 were compared, participants were more likely to have taught medical students and house officers in the last year (both P<.05). Participants rated their proficiency for giving feedback more highly (P<.05). Participants scored higher than nonparticipants for 14 out of 15 behaviors related to being learner centered, building a supportive learning environment, giving and receiving feedback, and being effective leaders, half of which were statistically significant (P<.05). When remote and recent participants from 1987 through 2000 were compared with each other, few differences were found.

Conclusions

Participation in the longitudinal FDP was associated with continued teaching activities, desirable teaching behaviors, and higher self-assessments related to giving feedback and learner centeredness. Institutions should consider supporting faculty wishing to participate in FDPs in teaching skills.

Objectives

To examine factors that influenced doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students to collaborate with faculty members, preceptors, or others on scholarly activities that resulted in publication of an article in a pharmacy journal, and whether this experience influenced their consideration of a career in academic pharmacy.

Methods

A 17-question survey instrument was e-mailed to student authors of papers published between 2004 and 2008 in 6 pharmacy journals. Responses were analyzed to determine factors influencing student participation in research and whether the experience led them to consider a career in academic pharmacy.

Results

Factors about their participation in the scholarly activity that respondents found valuable included personal fulfillment and making a contribution to the literature. Respondents indicated they were more interested in a career in academic pharmacy after their participation in the scholarly experience (p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Participation in scholarly activities and student authorship of a peer-reviewed journal manuscript during pharmacy school may lead to increased interest in a career in academic pharmacy.

World understanding is more than a desirable goal today: it may be crucial to our survival. Many universities realize this and have in the past decade spent a great deal of time and money to ensure a steady flow of faculty and students between the U.S. and other countries. Librarians with faculty or academic status may benefit from promoting such relationships themselves. Job exchanges and training programs offer librarians in the United States the opportunity to become acquainted with their counterparts in other countries. Such programs enable librarians of various countries to become aware of one another's special needs and common problems, and allow them to share ideas and expertise. This paper presents an overview of international training programs for foreign librarians in the United States, focusing on programs for health sciences librarians in United States medical school libraries. Information is given on the availability and types of institutionally sponsored programs, as well as on MLA's Cunningham Fellowship Program. Some of the difficulties and the benefits of such programs are discussed.

BACKGROUND

Providing and eliciting high-quality feedback is valuable in medical education. Medical learners' attainment of clinical competence and professional growth can be facilitated by reliable feedback. This study's primary objective was to identify characteristics that are associated with physician teachers' proficiency with feedback.

METHODS

A cohort of 363 physicians, who were either past participants of the Johns Hopkins Faculty Development Program or members of a comparison group, were surveyed by mail in July 2002. Survey questions focused on personal characteristics, professional characteristics, teaching activities, self-assessed teaching proficiencies and behaviors, and scholarly activity. The feedback scale, a composite feedback variable, was developed using factor analysis. Logistic regression models were then used to determine which faculty characteristics were independently associated with scoring highly on a dichotomized version of the feedback scale.

RESULTS

Two hundred and ninety-nine physicians responded (82%) of whom 262 (88%) had taught medical learners in the prior 12 months. Factor analysis revealed that the 7 questions from the survey addressing feedback clustered together to form the “feedback scale” (Cronbach's α: 0.76). Six items, representing discrete faculty responses to survey questions, were independently associated with high feedback scores: (i) frequently attempting to detect and discuss the emotional responses of learners (odds ratio [OR] = 4.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.2 to 9.6), (ii) proficiency in handling conflict (OR = 3.7, 95% CI 1.5 to 9.3), (iii) frequently asking learners what they desire from the teaching interaction (OR = 3.5, 95% CI 1.7 to 7.2), (iv) having written down or reviewed professional goals in the prior year (OR = 3.2, 95% CI 1.6 to 6.4), (v) frequently working with learners to establish mutually agreed upon goals, objectives, and ground rules (OR = 2.2, 95% CI 1.1 to 4.7), and (vi) frequently letting learners figure things out themselves, even if they struggle (OR = 2.1, 95% CI 1.1 to 3.9).

CONCLUSIONS

Beyond providing training in specific feedback skills, programs that want to improve feedback performance among their faculty may wish to promote the teaching behaviors and proficiencies that are associated with high feedback scores identified in this study.

Doctoral students and new faculty members often seek advice from more senior faculty on how to advance their program of research. Students may ask whether they should choose the manuscript option for their dissertation or whether they should seek a postdoctoral fellowship. New faculty members wonder whether they should pursue a career development (K) award and whether they need a mentor as they strive to advance their research while carrying out teaching, service, and practice responsibilities. In this paper, we describe literature on the impact of selected aspects of pre and postdoctoral training and faculty strategies on scholarly productivity in the faculty role. We also combine our experiences at a school of nursing within a research-intensive university to suggest strategies for success. Noting the scarcity of research that evaluates the effect of these strategies we are actively engaged in collecting data on their relationship to the scholarly productivity of students and faculty members within our own institution.

The purpose of this report was to describe the development, implementation, and outcomes from 3 complementary programs to facilitate the development of faculty members. The Faculty Development Committee (FDC) at the University of Tennessee developed 3 new complementary programs: the Individual Faculty Development Program to encourage faculty members to assess and identify their own specific developmental needs; the Seed Research Grant Program to fund scholarly activities by faculty; and the Technology Support Program to foster financial support of technology upgrades crucial for meeting the research, education, and service needs of faculty members. Eighteen faculty members participated in the Individual Faculty Development Program during the first 2 academic years and all provided positive feedback about their experiences. The Seed Research Grant Program funded 6 projects during its inaugural year. Limited outcome data from these 2 programs are extremely favorable relative to grant submissions and publications, and enhanced educational offerings and evaluations. The Technology Support Fund was initiated in the 2005-2006 academic year. The 3 faculty development programs initiated are offered as examples whereby faculty members are given a high degree of self-determination relative to identifying programs that will effectively contribute to their growth as academicians. Other colleges of pharmacy are encouraged to consider similar initiatives to foster individual faculty development at this critical period of growth within academic pharmacy.

Background:

Faculty scholarship, teaching load, and compensation can be indicators of institutional health and can impact curricular quality. Periodic data are published by the US Department of Education for all sectors of higher education, but do not list chiropractic colleges as a separate category.

Objective:

To report on the scholarly output, teaching load, and compensation of the full-time faculty at one chiropractic college, and to compare those data to national and local norms.

Methods:

Data on chiropractic faculty were collected from within the institution. External data were collected from the US Department of Education and US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Results:

The chiropractic faculty assessed create about one-tenth the scholarly output, carried 2.7 times the course load of external doctoral faculty and 1.4 times the course load typical of 2-year (community) college faculty, received two-thirds the salary typical for all segments of education, and one-half the typical retirement benefits.

Conclusion:

Results are suggestive of significant deficiencies within chiropractic education that pose risk to the future of the profession.

Building on the experiences of librarian representatives to curriculum committees in the colleges of dentistry, medicine, and nursing, the Health Science Center Libraries (HSCL) Strategic Plan recommended the formation of a Library Liaison Work Group to create a formal Library Liaison Program to serve the six Health Science Center (HSC) colleges and several affiliated centers and institutes. The work group's charge was to define the purpose and scope of the program, identify models of best practice, and recommend activities for liaisons. The work group gathered background information, performed an environmental scan, and developed a philosophy statement, a program of liaison activities focusing on seven |primary areas, and a forum for liaison communication. Hallmarks of the plan included intensive subject specialization (beyond collection development), extensive communication with users, and personal information services. Specialization was expected to promote competence, communication, confidence, comfort, and customization. Development of the program required close coordination with other strategic plan implementation teams, including teams for collection development, education, and marketing. This paper discusses the HSCL's planning process and the resulting Library Liaison Program. Although focusing on an academic health center, the planning process and liaison model may be applied to any library serving diverse, subject-specific user populations.

Objectives: The objectives are to determine how medical faculty members use scholarly journals, whether print or electronic journals are read more, whether there is a pattern among types of users, and what similarities and differences there are between the use of journals by medical faculty and faculty in other disciplines.

Methods: Medical faculty of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) multi-campus system were surveyed, and their responses estimated using critical incident technique to characterize the different aspects of their use of print and electronic journals.

Results: Medical faculty read a great deal, especially compared to scientists. The most frequently reported principal purpose of reading is to support their primary research (30% of reading). The majority of reading comes from recently published articles, mostly from personal subscriptions. Medical faculty continue to rely on print journals (approximately 70% of readings) versus electronic journals. Age of faculty does not appear to influence the choice of print or electronic format. Medical faculty read more articles than others on average and need information digested and verified in a way to save them time. Convenience and currency are highly valued attributes.

Conclusions: It can be asserted that librarians and publishers must find ways to provide the attributes of convenience and currency and match the portability of personal subscriptions in an electronic journal format for medical faculty.

Changes in the structure of commercial scholarly publishing have led to spiraling subscription prices. This has resulted in a "serials crisis" that has eroded library budgets and threatened the system of scientific communication. Open access represents one possible solution, and librarians are working to help make it a reality.

Background: Leaders in the profession encourage academic health sciences librarians to assume new roles as part of the growth process for remaining vital professionals. Have librarians embraced these new roles?

Objectives: This research sought to examine from the reference librarians' viewpoints how their roles have changed over the past ten years and what the challenges these changes present as viewed by both the librarians and library directors.

Method: A series of eight focus groups was conducted with reference librarians from private and public academic health sciences libraries. Directors of these libraries were interviewed separately.

Results: Reference librarians' activities have largely confirmed the role changes anticipated by their leaders. They are teaching more, engaging in outreach through liaison initiatives, and designing Web pages, in addition to providing traditional reference duties. Librarians offer insights into unanticipated issues encountered in each of these areas and offer some creative solutions. Directors discuss the issues from their unique perspective.

Conclusion: Librarians have identified areas for focusing efforts in lifelong learning. Adult learning theory, specialized databases and resources needed by researchers, ever-evolving technology, and promotion and evaluation of the library are areas needing attention. Implications for library education and continuing professional development are presented.

The 2009-2010 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Council of Faculties Faculty Affairs Committee reviewed published literature assessing the scope and outcomes of faculty development for tenure and promotion. Relevant articles were identified via a PubMed search, review of pharmacy education journals, and identification of position papers from major healthcare professions academic organizations. While programs intended to enhance faculty development were described by some healthcare professions, relatively little specific to pharmacy has been published and none of the healthcare professions have adequately evaluated the impact of various faculty-development programs on associated outcomes.

The paucity of published information strongly suggests a lack of outcomes-oriented faculty-development programs in colleges and schools of pharmacy. Substantial steps are required toward the development and scholarly evaluation of faculty-development programs. As these programs are developed and assessed, evaluations must encompass all faculty subgroups, including tenure- and nontenure track faculty members, volunteer faculty members, women, and underrepresented minorities. This paper proposes AACP, college and school, and department-level recommendations intended to ensure faculty success in achieving tenure and promotion.

The California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP)—established in 2003 in response to new state legislation aimed at enhancing the evaluation of potential changes in health benefit packages—represents a unique marriage of academic analysis and real-time legislative decision making. CHBRP is based within the University of California (UC) Office of the President and provides analyses to the legislature within a 60-day timeframe on the potential consequences of specific benefit changes under consideration as part of legislative mandates. The consequences examined include current known medical effectiveness of the services for which coverage is to be mandated as well as potential costs and impact on public health considerations associated with the mandate. Teams throughout the University system specialize in analyzing medical effectiveness, costs, and public health impacts and work with a statewide faculty task force and a private actuarial firm to generate literature reviews and analyses in response to legislative requests. These teams work on multiple requests simultaneously, all within the constraints of the legislative calendar. In its first 2 years, CHBRP generated 22 such analyses.

Faculty development, particularly that aspect of it concerned with increasing the educational and teaching skills of faculty members, is currently a major issue for medicine in general—and family medicine in particular. This article presents the author's views about what might be aspects of the guiding philosophy and content of such a program of faculty development, where it is concerned with increasing teaching skills.

These views have been distilled over several years of personal growth and development, whilst working in this area as an educator within the RACGP's family medicine program, as a participant and facilitator in international workshops examining related topics, and most recently as a visiting professor within the McGill Department of Family Medicine at Jewish General Hospital, Montreal.

Scholarly writing is a critical skill for faculty in academic medicine; however, few faculty receive instruction in the process. We describe the experience of 18 assistant professors who participated in a writing and faculty development program which consisted of 7 monthly 75-minute sessions embedded in a Collaborative Mentoring Program (CMP). Participants identified barriers to writing, developed personal writing strategies, had time to write, and completed monthly writing contracts. Participants provided written responses to open-ended questions about the learning experience, and at the end of the program, participants identified manuscripts submitted for publication, and completed an audiotaped interview. Analysis of qualitative data using data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification showed that this writing program facilitated the knowledge, skills, and support needed to foster writing productivity. All participants completed at least 1 scholarly manuscript by the end of the CMP. The impact on participants’ future academic productivity requires long-term follow-up.

Background

Scholarly activity as a component of residency education is becoming increasingly emphasized by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. “Limited or no evidence of resident or faculty scholarly activity” is a common citation given to family medicine residency programs by the Review Committee for Family Medicine.

Objective

The objective was to provide a model scholarly activity curriculum that has been successful in improving the quality of graduate medical education in a family medicine residency program, as evidenced by a record of resident academic presentations and publications.

Methods

We provide a description of the Clinical Scholars Program that has been implemented into the curriculum of the Trident/Medical University of South Carolina Family Medicine Residency Program.

Results

During the most recent 10-year academic period (2000–2010), a total of 111 residents completed training and participated in the Clinical Scholars Program. This program has produced more than 24 presentations during national and international meetings of medical societies and 15 publications in peer-reviewed medical journals. In addition, many of the projects have been presented during meetings of state and regional medical organizations.

Conclusions

This paper presents a model curriculum for teaching about scholarship to family medicine residents. The success of this program is evidenced by the numerous presentations and publications by participating residents.