PREREQUISITES:
MAS students: Completion of the MAS Core courses, plus permission of the instructor.
MLIS and Dual students: Some electives can be taken in conjunction with the MLIS Core courses; consult with the MLIS Program Chair for recommendations.
GOAL: This goal of this course is to provide students with a strong foundation in health sciences librarianship.
OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the course, students will have a foundation in:
- Libraries and information services in health; health care in Canada as a setting for libraries;
- Health care trends (i.e. consumer health, evidence-based medicine, informatics) and impact on libraries and services;
- Reference services and users, including print & electronic sources, using knowledge of specific sources, and how they meet the information needs of specific users;
- Online databases in health librarianship;
- Management of collections, services, personnel, projects.
- National and international associations, new initiatives and/or trends in health librarianship.
Upon completion of the course, students will be able – in the health library context – to:
- Design and implement library support for health and health care – clinicians, researchers, planners and administrators (government, industry, health care system), students (basic and clinical), teachers, patients and consumers;
- Discuss health care as a setting for libraries, and health care trends (ie. Evidence-based practice);
- Provide reference services, including print and Internet resources, using knowledge of specific sources and their usefulness in meeting the information needs of specific users;
- Search bibliographic and other databases (ie. MEDLINE, PubMed, etc) utilizing controlled vocabularies;
- Undertake end-user instruction, and mediated search services;
- Discuss aspects of technical & public services, and resource sharing particular to health science libraries;
- Analyze information needs in health, including communication patterns and media, information seeking behaviour, and the transfer of research into practice, and apply this analysis to library service delivery;
- Discuss the literatures of the health sciences;
- Describe national and international services and resources supporting health libraries
CONTENT:
- History of medicine & health librarianship
- Controlled vocabularies & bibliographic database searching in health
- Reference services to health users
- End user groups & instruction in health libraries
- Research & publishing cycles in sciences
- Perspectives from the field
- Resource sharing & interlibrary loan
- Evidence-based medicine & Informatics
- Complementary & Alternative Medicine
- Consumer Health
- Entrepreneurial work in health libraries
- Management of health libraries
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