Evidence‐based Practice for Information Professionals:A Handbook

Abstract

Librarians working in healthcare in the late 1990s had the considerable privilege, and indeed pleasure, of witnessing and participating in, a revolutionary paradigm which was to place information management, its associated skills and technologies in centre stage in the delivery of appropriate and effective care. That paradigm, variously identified as "evidence based medicine", "evidence based healthcare" or "evidence based practice" placed a premium on the retrieval of rigorous and reliable evidence to inform clinical decision making.Had this been the full impact of this new model for ongoing discovery and lifelong learning then you, the reader, likely working in an information sector outside healthcare, would have no need to even open this edited book on evidence based information practice. The fact that you have opened this book bears testimony to the migration of the "evidence based" model to other sectors including education, social work and management. It also attests to an increasing interest in the evidence base for our own practice. Although much of the trail has been blazed from within the healthcare sector, and is necessarily represented as such in this book, we contend (and many colleagues agree) that this model is equally valid for the sector within which you are working. What is required is the application of the tools and techniques to your specific area of practice, be it in libraries, museums or archives, and its sensitive adaptation to your local culture and environment.We, the editors, would like to invite you to examine this model with an open mind and attempt to identify its potential usefulness wthin your specific context. In doing so we would encourage you to challenge, to criticize and, even, to combat! "No stimulation without irritation" has long been a rallying cry from Muir Gray, one of the leading proponents of evidence based practice. In producing the light that only the generation of heat can occasion we believe that the cause of evidence based practice will be better advanced than through some uneasy and artificial consensus.We would like to take this opportunity to thank both our spouses and families for their patience, forbearance and encouragement as we oversaw the progress of this work from idea to realization.