LIBR 220-04
LIBR 220-12
Resources and Information Services in Professions and Disciplines
Topic: Medical Librarianship
Fall 2007 Greensheet
Charles Greenberg, MLS MEd
E-mail
Phone (work): 203-737-2960
Phone (home): 203-847-4784
Phone (cell): 203-243-0484
Instant Messaging:
librarian4ysm(AIM,MSN), cjgberg(gtalk),charlieatyalelib(yahoo)
Office Location: http://www.meebo.com/room/charliessjsuoffice/
Discussion Office hours (August 23rd to December 10th, with Elluminate):
Wednesdays 6:00pm-7:00pm PST, Sundays: 6:00pm-7:00pm PST
(unpredicted class cancellations will be posted in Blackboard Course announcements)
| Greensheet Links Textbooks and Readings Course Requirements |
Resources Blackboard Blackboard Tutorials SLIS eBookstore |
The SJSU Blackboard course management system will serve as the primary repository for course information and assignments. Please enroll for this course on the Blackboard site after August 20th. Registered students will receive an enrollment code for the Blackboard site via a message sent by the instructor, through My.SJSU, on August 20th.
Course Description
Eighty percent of American internet users, or some 113 million adults, have searched for information on at least one of seventeen health topics. Information professionals in a variety of settings are just as likely as librarians in hospital or medical centers to encounter requests for useful health information. Usefulness can be calculated as relevancy multiplied by accuracy, divided by the work necessary to obtain an answer. Despite the availability of accurate medical information, the work necessary to access and utilize such information often discourages both discovery and use. LIBR 220-04, Resources and Information Services in Medical Librarianship, will offer contemporary perspectives on topics such as health sciences library history, medical subject classification, finding quality health information, consumer health programming, evidence-based health care, and cooperative medical library programs.
Course Prerequisites: LIBR 202 Information Retrieval, LIBR 210, Reference and Information Services, or equivalent coursework.
Course Objectives
Student Learning Outcomes
Students should, by the end of the course, be able to:
- Explain several factors that led to the establishment of medical libraries and the specialization of medical librarianship.
- Describe medical librarian ethical behavior and discuss scenarios when job performance could challenge ethical behavior.
- Describe the need and benefits of a national medical information infrastructure.
- Find and describe the current National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) Regional Medical Library (RML) structure and services.
- Discuss the history of and locate medical subject vocabularies.
- Demonstrate the appropriate use of MeSH structures and tools, such as hierarchies of relevant terms, classified equivalents, and minor subject headings.
- Describe characteristics of the transition from print to electronic searching, including before and beyond the web browser.
- Perform basic searching in biomedical databases, using appropriate use of controlled vocabularies, particularly when specificity is required.
- Describe and distinguish the content differences in PUBMED and Medline, as well as easily locate relevant online guides and tutorials for Medline and PUBMED.
- Find recommendations for core (small) clinical or research collections.
- Find reviews for monographs in lesser known fields and determine the leading journals in a variety of medical specialties.
- Locate and describe a variety of biomedical databases and provide basic comparisons.
- Distinguish subject vocabularies or classification schemes in health specialties.
- Distinguish primary clientele for health sciences libraries in particular contexts and predict a standard or level of expected demand for services.
- Describe the principle of best [available] evidence and construct an "evidence pyramid" which shows the relative abundance of types of evidence.
- Locate "clinical filters" in PubMed and understand how they improve a search strategy.
- Describe the continuum that exists between sensitive and specific searching.
- Recommend consumer health sources and apply quality evaluation criteria.
- Describe several types of biomedical libraries, based on knowledge of clientele and collections.
- Locate job postings, as well as opportunities for advanced training and fellowships.
- Describe the opportunities for partnerships and collaboration that exist for libraries within an institutional setting.
- Articulate the library role in a health care, education, or research settings.
- Describe several ways that medical libraries collaborate to change public opinion and promote best practices for information access and usage.
LIBR 220-04 supports the following SLIS Core Competencies:
- Articulate the ethics, values and foundational principles of library and information professionals and their role in the promotion of intellectual freedom;
- compare the environments and organizational settings in which library and information professionals practice;
- design, query and evaluate information retrieval systems;
- use the basic concepts and principles related to the creation, evaluation, selection, acquisition, preservation and organization of specific items or collections of information;
- understand the system of standards and methods used to control and create information structures and apply basic principles involved in the organization and representation of knowledge;
- demonstrate proficiency in the use of current information and communication technologies, and other related technologies, as they affect the resources and uses of libraries and other types of information providing entities;
- use service concepts, principles and techniques that facilitate information access, relevance, and accuracy for individuals or groups of users;
- understand the nature of research, research methods and research findings; retrieve, evaluate and synthesize scholarly and professional literature for informed decision-making by specific client groups;
- demonstrate oral and written communication skills necessary for group work, collaborations and professional level presentations;
- contribute to the cultural, economic, educational and social well-being of our communities.
Textbooks and Readings
Required Text
No Required textbooks.
Required readings and web site evaluations are assigned on a weekly basis through Blackboard.
Many readings are selected from the complete run of the Bulletin and Journal of the Medical Library Association, available at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov
Additional readings and assignments will be posted in Blackboard.
Student access accounts will also be obtained for relevant commercial biomedical databases that are not already part of SJSU Library holdings.
Course Requirements
Evaluation Criteria
- Class participation, 20% of final grade; including discussion forum comments on papers (students can participate in two weekly online office hours, Wednesdays 6:00pm-7:00pm PST, Sundays: 6:00pm-7:00pm PST) While attendance is not mandatory at any given session, attendance will be taken and contribute to class participation. Attendance at one session per week is expected.
- Project-written 25% of final grade (no more than 3000 words, including bibliography, based on a student-selected topic from readings)
- Presentation 25% of final grade (Students will present a 15-20 minute live presentation of their paper topic, using Elluminate, during the last two weeks of the semester)
- Evaluating Health web sites 10% of final grade; evaluate two health information web sites with set of provided criteria
- Readings and Reactions 20% of final grade; weekly essays posted to a topic discussion forum, demonstrating your understanding of how topic readings relate to SLIS school-wide competencies
The evaluation of the written project will be based on the criteria of:
| Required Elements: Introduction Body,Summary & Conclusion; Bibliography; 3000 words or less |
Theme, Hypothesis, or Topic statement |
Evidence of wide variety of sources related to Medical Librarianship. | Technical accuracy of Research Material |
Appearance: Spelling Grammar Punctuation Overall neatness |
The evaluation of the presentation will be based on the criteria of organization, content knowledge, visuals, mechanics (presentation), and delivery (performance).
Course Calendar
| August 20th | Receive Access Code for Blackboard course |
| August 23rd | First Day of Fall 2000 Instruction; Weekly readings begin |
| August 26th | First Elluminate Discussion Hour (Wednesdays 6:00pm-7:00pm PST, Sundays: 6:00pm-7:00pm PST) |
| October 14th | Written Paper / Presentation Topic Declaration Due |
| October 28th | No Elluminate Discussion Hour |
| November 4th | No Elluminate Discussion Hour |
| November 21st | No Elluminate Discussion Hour |
| December 2nd | Expanded Elluminate Session (6:00pm-8:00pm) for class presentations |
| December 5th | Expanded Elluminate Session (6:00pm-8:00pm) for class presentations |
| December 9th | Expanded Elluminate Session (6:00pm-8:00pm) for class presentations |
| December 10th | Fall 2007 - last day of instruction |
| December 14th | Final Paper Due (6:00pm PST) |
Assignment due dates subject to change with fair notice.
Students are encouraged to use email and Mr. Greenberg’s Meebo Instant messaging Office at any time to see clarification of calendar dates and assignments.
Grading
Based on the evaluation percentages listed in evaluations criteria, the standard SJSU SLIS Grading Scale will be applied to an aggregate total of evaluation criteria:
| 97-100 | A |
| 94-96 | A- |
| 91-93 | B+ |
| 88-90 | B |
| 85-87 | B- |
| 82-84 | C+ |
| 79-81 | C |
| 76-78 | C- |
| 73-75 | D+ |
| 70-72 | D |
| 67-69 | D- |
| Below 67 | F |
In order to provide consistent guidelines for assessment for graduate level work in the School, these terms are applied to letter grades:
- C represents Adequate work; a grade of "C" counts for credit for the course;
- B represents Good work; a grade of "B" clearly meets the standards for graduate level work;
- A represents Exceptional work; a grade of "A" will be assigned for outstanding work only.
Students are advised that it is their responsibility to maintain a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.0.
Academic Integrity
Your own commitment to learning, as evidenced by your enrollment at San José State University, and the University's Academic Integrity Policy requires you to be honest in all your academic course work. Faculty members are required to report all infractions to the Office of Student Conduct and Ethical Development. The policy on academic integrity can be found at http://www.sjsu.edu/senate/S07-2.htm.
Any violation of the academic integrity policy in LIBR 220-04 will result in a “0” for the assignment containing the violation, in addition to any other sanctions applied by the Office of Student Conduct and Ethical Development.
http://www.sa.sjsu.edu/judicial_affairs/students/student_resources.html
- If you are unsure of how to cite your work, check with your instructor for the proper technique. Using some one’s else’s without proper citation will not work. Making up resources for a bibliography, would be considered a violation to the academic integrity policy.
- Downloading papers off the internet – it is just as easy for me to find the same paper on the internet as it is for you.
- Cutting and pasting information off the internet without proper citation.
- Turning in someone else’s paper as your own.
- Using the same paper in two or more classes is considered a violation to the Academic Integrity Policy unless you have both instructor’ permission.
Reasonable Accommodation of Disabilities
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability,
please e-mail me as soon as possible. Presidential Directive 97-03 requires
that students with disabilities register with the Disability Resource Center
(DRC) to establish record of their disability.
No matter where students reside, they should contact the SJSU DRC to register. The DRC Web site: http://www.drc.sjsu.edu/
Reasonable Accommodation of Disabilities
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, please e-mail me as soon as possible. Presidential Directive 97-03 requires that students with disabilities register with the Disability Resource Center (DRC) to establish record of their disability. No matter where students reside, they should contact the SJSU DRC to register. The DRC Web site: http://www.drc.sjsu.edu/
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