A librarian’s journal club: A forum for sharing ideas and experiences

Abstract

A forum for sharing ideas and experiences T oo frequently our library's professional staff fail to take time to discuss, as a group, library and libraryrelated issues that do not necessarily impact their daily routine or the library's daytoday operation. More commonly, professional staff is absorbed in completing the tasks and assigned duties that fall chiefly within their immediate area of responsibility. Innovative ideas that are peripheral, not part of a current service or not within the scope of the larger group, are less likely to be disseminated for discussion. Certainly dialogue takes place between indi viduals, by happenstance or on the fl y, after a conference or a workshop, but outside of an arena or context in which more individu als can participate and benefi t professionally through a sharing of opinions and experi ences. Without such a forum, new ideas do not stand a chance. Hence, professional communication is more often not as rigorous or robust as it might be, and should be, in the workplace.Staff meetings historically provide a venue that draws a large professional audience, but typically these meetings use a formal report ing structure that does not accommodate a more relaxed dialogue or professional dis course around a related or pertinent topic. To address this lament, a suggestion was made at one of our library faculty meetings to take a look at a known, successful format for organizing individuals around a topic for discussion-the "journal club."

Tisch Library Journal Salon: Improving cross-departmental communication via informal professional development

“…For instance, medical librarians at the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University participated in a journal club to obtain continuing education credits from the Medical Library Association (Seago, Turman, Horne, Croom, & Cary, 1994). Both tenure-track and non-tenure-track librarians participate in journal clubs to keep abreast of research for their publication requirements, as a forum for discussing new ideas extending beyond their typical duties, and also as a way to interact with colleagues outside of their own department (Barsky, 2009;Hickman & Allen, 2005;Kraemer, 2007).…”

“…While journal clubs are a popular way for healthcare professionals to keep up with new research affecting their practice (Deenadayalan, Grimmer-Somers, Prior, & Kumar, 2008), in our survey of the literature we found minimal information on this form of continuing education for librarians in general, let alone for the specific population of academic librarians we hoped to investigate. It has been suggested that the sparse amount of literature may indicate that journal clubs are not very common in academic libraries, or that librarians who do take part in this type of professional development are simply not publishing their outcomes (Hickman & Allen, 2005;Pearce-Smith, 2006). In 2011, Young and Vilelle sought to determine the extent that academic librarians are participating in journal clubs.…”

PaLA Virtual Journal Club: Providing Opportunities for Reflection, Improvement, and Connections

“…Finding time and managing scheduling conflicts are frequently cited as barriers to maintaining a journal club, and it seems that sustaining membership is one of the biggest challenges journal clubs face (Hickman & Allen, 2005;Fitzgibbons, 2015;Young & Vilelle, 2011). Sortedahl, Wical, and Benike (2018) found that offering CE credits was a valuable motivator for their group.…”