Changes in the US healthcare system in the past 20 years have meant increasing pressure on consumers to find their own healthcare information. Their search, amid an ever‐widening array of information resources, has profound implications for library reference services. A recent study of 350 public librarians in Michigan is, to date, the only investigation of librarian practices in health information provision in a large region of the USA. Examines services, queries, problems, librarian training and health collection resources. The findings have special meaning for academic librarians as they delineate their unique role in the health information system and, with public librarians, seek to devise effective means for responsive library service in today’s competitive health information resources environment.
Scholarship and governance have emerged as the two most problematic aspects of faculty status for academic librarians. A comparative survey of 201 librarians, 126 unaffiliated and 75 unionized, revealed wide disparities, according to librarian status/title designations, in the opportunities afforded librarians to meet these requirements. The 34-item questionnaire focused on librarians’ status/title characteristics, representation means, and institutional support for professional development, sabbaticals/leaves, travel, tuition, and participatory management. Salary information, as a measure of librarian equality to teaching faculty, also was solicited. The survey results confirm that the absence of uniform representation on these status issues has profound implications for the future of the faculty status model as a standard for academic librarianship.
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