Special
Project – Mentor Agreement
I completed a special project in ILS 503-70, Foundations of Librarianship that I feel combine many of the skills I have acquired in this program, skills that I will need as a medical librarian. I established a semester-long mentor agreement with Timothy Lammers, MLS, Director, Waterbury Hospital Health Center Library. I submitted my mentor plan to Dr. Brown and it was accepted on January 27, 2001. With the help of my mentor, I worked on this project throughout the semester. The purpose of the project was to compile, based on specialty, an annotated guide to medical reference works, based on the Brandon-Hill list. The final result was to be a print and online resource that could be used by library patrons as a tool to guide them to the "gold standard" medical reference works in the collection at Waterbury Hospital Health Center Library.
Knowledge gained from this project
§ Increased awareness and exposure to the core literature and standard texts in the field of medicine.
§ Greater understanding of the needs of the medical library patron.
§ Increased knowledge of the National Library of Medicine’s classification schedule.
§ Increased collection development skills for the medical library.
§ Experience weeding and maintaining a medical collection.
§ Importance of cataloging and catalog maintenance.
Benefits to the library
§ Identification of subject areas underrepresented in the collection.
§ Identification of titles that have newer editions available for purchase.
§ Compilation of a reference tool for patrons and library staff.
§ Correction of errors in the OPAC.
The Brandon-Hill list is used by the majority of health science libraries as a collection development tool. I used the 18th version, dated April 1999. The list contains 627 books and 145 journals that are recommended for inclusion in small-to-medium medical libraries. The list is endorsed by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO, the agency that accredits hospitals). I cross-checked the list against the library OPAC and indicated titles the library owned, missing titles, and titles where a newer edition was available for purchase. I then compiled a listing of texts by specialty and reviewed each of the works. In my list I provided title, author, call number, and a brief annotation. I reviewed over 250 texts in the library’s collection. This information was compiled into a MSWORD document and into a Web page. As I was reviewing these materials, I learned important collection development skills, selection criteria, and increased my knowledge of the National Library of Medicine classification system. I also became more familiar with the collection and with the standard medical reference texts in each medical discipline.
My mentor guided me during weekly meetings, in which we discussed various issues of how best to review and layout the data. We spent a great deal of time discussing collection development, weeding, and maintenance of the medium-sized hospital’s medical library collection. The final project was to be placed on the hospital's Intranet, and copies of the Word file were made available to patrons and library staff. The listing was also to be used as a collection development tool since I had identified several areas in the collection where "gold standard" texts were missing. I also noted cases in which older editions on the shelves had not been updated to current editions. Since the items were checked against the library’s OPAC, I was also able to correct and update errors there (mostly incorrect call numbers or editions). It was during this process that I saw first hand the importance of catalog management. I was also locating the materials on the library shelves, and found several instances where incorrect call numbers appeared on the spine and the book was improperly shelf listed. These errors were corrected throughout the project.
I shared the results with the medical residents who used the library, the library staff, and the physicians and nurses who routinely visited the library. All seemed pleased with the information. Many took copies to use as a resource for quickly locating a text in a specialty. While many health care professionals are quite familiar with the standard texts in their own field, they do need assistance in selecting the best reference work when they need to consult information outside their subject specialty.
This project allowed me to develop skills in researching, creating a Web site, collection development, organizing resources, cataloging, OPAC maintenance, and applying NLM subject headings. I was able make recommendations for purchase of new texts in the collection in subject areas which were under-represented. The project was well received by the library staff and patrons.