A partnership between academic and public librarians: “What the Health” workshop series

Abstract

Background: Public librarians are in a unique position to assist the general public with health information inquiries. However, public librarians might not have the training, detailed knowledge, and confidence to provide high-quality health information.Case Presentation: The authors created and delivered three workshops to public librarians in Suffolk County, New York, highlighting several National Library of Medicine resources. Each workshop focused on a different topic: general consumer health resources, genetics health resources, and environmental/toxicology resources. At the end of each workshop, participants were asked to complete the Training Session Evaluation form provided by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM). All participants reported that they learned a new skill or about a new tool, that their ability to locate online health information improved, and that they planned to use the knowledge they gained in the future. Online tutorials covering the major resources from each workshop were created and made accessible to the public on several organizations’ websites. Virtual reference services were initiated for public librarians who need further assistance with these resources and will continue to be provided on an ongoing basis. Financial support for the equipment and software utilized in each of these tasks was provided by NNLM.Conclusions: Based on attendance and participant feedback, this model of health information outreach appears to have been successful in furthering the educational needs of public librarians and may be useful to others in creating a similar program in their communities.

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge: a health literacy training partnership before and during COVID-19

“…Medical library professionals and public librarians must continue to work together to empower patrons to locate reliable health information and to raise health literacy levels in the United States. Successful collaborations may take the form of the workshop introduced in this case study or may follow earlier examples described by Danhoundo [17] or Koos [18]. Overall, we found our partnership with the BPL with the assistance of NNLM MAR to be impactful and professionally satisfying.…”

An analysis of ALA‐accredited MLS curricula indicates deficiencies in the initial training provided for public librarians

“…There are also unique local programs that are implemented to provide training and support to public librarians (Koos et al, 2019;Pandolfelli et al, 2021). For example, the Stony Brook Medicine Healthy Libraries Program (HeLP) is an interprofessional initiative that consists of nursing, public health, social welfare and library science students who under supervision, provide various services in public library settings, including providing training sessions for public librarians as well as library patrons on various health topics (Pandolfelli et al, 2021).…”

“…For example, the Stony Brook Medicine Healthy Libraries Program (HeLP) is an interprofessional initiative that consists of nursing, public health, social welfare and library science students who under supervision, provide various services in public library settings, including providing training sessions for public librarians as well as library patrons on various health topics (Pandolfelli et al, 2021). Another initiative in the same county consisted of academic health sciences librarians providing training to public librarians on the use of National Library of Medicine resources (Koos et al, 2019). There are also several other programs such as the Healthy Libraries Initiative in Philadelphia (Healthy Library Initiative, n.d.) in which academic institutions partner with public libraries to provide instruction to public librarians (Engeszer et al, 2016;Zionts et al, 2010).…”

A health education outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library: lessons learned before and during a pandemic

“…Previous studies of academic medical and public library partnerships fall into two main approaches: (1) medical librarians training public library staff in health information resources [ 14 , 15 ] and (2) collaborating to plan and offer health programming targeting library patrons [ 16 – 18 ]. Many attributes of successful library outreach previously reported in the literature were found in this project, including sharing mutual interests and goals, aligning with institutional missions, and addressing community interests and needs [ 1 , 20 , 29 , 30 ].…”