Evidence based information practice: A pre- history

1. ‫الرحی‬‫الرحمن‬‫هللا‬ ‫بسم‬‫م‬
‫موضوع‬:‫عملیات‬
‫بر‬ ‫مبتنی‬ ‫اطالعات‬
‫شواهد‬
‫درس‬ ‫به‬ ‫مربوط‬:‫زبان‬
‫تخصصی‬
‫مربوطه‬ ‫استاد‬:‫دکتر‬

2. Chapter 3: Evidence_ Based Information
Practice: A pre_History
Introduction
Early EBIP Antecedents
The Observational Research Era
The Experimental Research Era
The Next Steps

3. Introduction
contribution of evidence to information practice has only been recognized in recent years.
librarianship has a long pedigree in practitioner-based research.
The first known cohort study in health librarianship was reported in 1946.
and other health librarians adapted the basic cohort design to answer important questions during the 1950s and
early 1960s. The first Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in health librarianship took place during the late
1970s. A small but identifiable stream of such studies continued during the early 1990s.
Thus, health librarians can point to use of research designs such as cohort studies or RCTs even before
“Evidence-Based Medicine” was first reported.
This chapter charts the development of practitioner-led research as a fundamental platform for evidence based
librarianship (EBL) and the broader, evidence based information practice (EBIP). It considers where EBIP has
come from, examines major historical developments, and highlights a few individual contributions in our search
for the early origins of EBIP.

4. In the beginning…
was a question.
A long time ago someone working in a library asked: Is this really the best way to do this?
Why don’t we try doing this a new way instead of the way we have always done it?
Or, perhaps they asked: Why don’t more people use our library?
What happened next probably depended upon how their manager reacted to their questioning
of conventional wisdom.
The identity of that first librarian is lost to the obscurity of time.

5. Early EBIPAntecedents
The roots of EBIP pre-date the modern international movement and may be traced in the histories of the profession and
biographies of noted librarians, professional “ancestors” who exhibited, at times, one or more of its defining characteristics.
Surveying the past 5500 years, historian James Thompson makes the humbling observation that:
“The development of libraries and librarianship has not been some kind of evolutionary process whereby these have grown
better and better.”
Sometimes, inferior newer methods replace older, superior methods without question; existing and incompetent practices mean
while continue unchallenged. Perhaps progress in the past is attributable to the extent that librarians of the past
have been prototypical evidence based practitioners?
Librarianship has only recently become a legitimate profession, beginning about 1876.
Prior to this “librarians” ranged from technically competent slaves to famous scholars but few had any apparent professional
consciousness.
The profession began to emerge with the formations of the American Library Association (1876) and the Library Association
(1877).
Professional journals and formal library education soon followed. Social and political movements such as Progressivism and
Populism exerted a strong influence upon the emergence of the values of the U.S. library profession.

6. Continue…
These same values later diffused to other countries.
Two US librarians stand out for their advancement of EBIP principles and were probably, at the time, identified as
pragmatists.
John Shaw Billings developed the Library of the Surgeon General of the U.S.
John Cotton Dana (1856-1929) exhibited many prototypical EBIP qualities. He thought that librarianship had an
inherently rigid outlook, and he tried to discourage any hint of this tendency in those around him.
The professionalization of librarianship led to the establishment of formal library education.
Melvil Dewey pioneered the famous decimal classification system that bore his name, helped form the American
Library Association, and founded the first library school in the US. Yet, research reveals that Dewey exhibited a
decidedly anti-EBIP rigidity toward the profession, frequent reversion to conventional thinking and a tendency to
ward codification over scepticism.

7. The Observational Research Era:
Library research continues to favour descriptive, rather than observational or experimental , research methods.
William D. Postell inaugurated the observational era in library research duringthe 1940s when he began the
first known cohort study to question the practice of using recommended books and titles from “authoritative
lists” to guide selection decisions.
Postell employed a cohort design to determine how journals most highly ranked on a list of recommended
journals compared to journals actually used by his clientele. Postell found that usage of journals correlated some
what with the quality ranking opinions of the physiology faculty at Columbia University but did not correlate
with two previous citation analyses. FrederickG he at the Yale Medical Library wished to identify the most
popular journals in his reading room so as to display only the most heavily used titles from the much larger
overall journals collection.
He supplemented his cohort study of usage with a citation analysis, based upon references found in recent Yale
faculty publications. His cohort study measured use for a five-year period through an analysis of old charge
slips. Heaviest usage of journals occurred within the first year of publication and 40 journals alone accounted
for nearly 50% of total journals use.

8. Continue...
During 1954 the journal from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia reported
another cohort study of journals usage.
During the 1970s both types of cohort (journal use and interlibrary loan
request analysis) studies were commonly employed by medical libraries yet
rarely published in peer-reviewed journals.
Mean while in the late 1970s the Medical Library Association was starting to
articulate a serious need for higher standards in applied research regarding
health librarianship practice.
Staudt, Halbrook and Brodman conducted a thirdtype of cohort study during the
1970s to evaluate a Clinical Medical Librarian.

9. The Experimental Research Era:
In attempting a further evaluation of a CML programme in the late 1970s Joanne Gard
Marshall and her colleague Victor Neufeld made EBIP history by utilisingthe Randomised
Controlled Trial (RCT) research design to answer their specific question on the
programme’s efficacy.
The 1970s had witnessed atremendous increase in the number and popularity of
pharmaceutical RCTs. The proliferation of hundreds of new drugs betweenthe 1950s and
1970s led the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to encourage pharmaceutical firmsto
use RCTs to demonstratethe efficacy of the many new drugs
Competing for approval. Although the RCT design originated during the 1940s in the UK it
only became widely utilised following endorsement by the FDA.
Not with standing the respective contributions of the UK and the US, it was a Canadian,
Joanne Marshall , who introduced RCTs to health librarianship. Subsequently, furtherteams
of Canadians conducted RCTs in search of evidence concerning online searching. Eventually
health librarians inthe US and UK respectively beganto utilizethe RCT research design.

10. In 1982 former MLA President Erika Love guidedtheformation of the MLA Research Section.
The MLA research section produced three noteworthy contributions to the formation of the EBIP movement:
• In 1987 it began the newsletter Hypothesis, a major communication vehicle and focus for researchers within
health librarianship.
• Second, the Research Task Force developed a research policy for MLA entitled “Using Scientific
Evidenceto Improve Information Practice.” This new policy hinted at the concept of EBIP inthe language
used in two passages.
• Third, the Research Section established the MLA Research Award in 1996. Competition for this annual
award has acted as a powerful incentive to conduct and present research projects that have utilized higher
levels of EBIP Evidence.
As early as 1996 the Research Section of MLA ran a session entitled “Evidence Based Practicefor Librarians:
Practical examples of usable research”.
In 1999, the Chair of the Health Libraries Group Research Working Party took the MLA’s EBL continuing education course
and enthusiastically reported his experience to colleagues in the UK.

11. Continue…
A leading UK evidence based practitioner became a member of the Hypothesis editorial board and a column editor
for its “International Research Reviews” feature.
The Evidence-Based Librarianship Implementation Committee (EBLIC) began an international collaborative
search for the most relevant research questions facing our profession.
Further international EBL collaboration led to recommendations for structured abstracts and practice guidelines.
The First International EBL Conference held in Sheffield during 2001 included attendees from the UK, Canada,
the US, Sweden, and Norway.
Two systematic reviews, reported as work in progress at the conference, constitute further significant landmarks.
The First International EBL Conference also included two speakersfrom the UK Library and Information
Research Group, a wider research group drawn mainly from the academic and public library constituencies.
Established in 1977 to develop and maintain links, within the profession and elsewhere, between all who have an
interest in library and information research and investigation this Group had seen an increasing preoccupation
with practitioner-based research as witnessed by its lis-lirg discussion group and its quarterly journal Library and
Information Research.

12. Continue…
Consequently, by the beginning of the twenty-first century the core characteristics of the
international movement.
• A process beginning with a clearly formulated question with relevance to our practice, a
search for the evidence to address this question, the critical appraisal of the existing
evidence and the weighing of that evidence based upon practical experience.
• The recognition that appropriate answers for different types of question require different
types of evidence.
• Scepticism about the validity and reliability of evidence due to the risks of introducing
bias into research
• An international collaboration to ensure a widespread sharing of methodologies and
evidence, aimed at improving professional practice.

13. The Next Steps
Evidence Based Information Practice (EBIP) continues to unfold as this book goes to press.
The publication of this book, a special issue of Health Information and Libraries Journal
devoted to EBIP and the Second International EBL Conference in Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada suggest that many more EBIP landmarks remain before us.
In going back in time one risks misinterpreting or exaggerating “evidence” for early traces of
EBIP. How accurately can we detect faint antecedents of EBIP in the utterances and writings
of colleagues long ago? Are we truly detecting an EBIP
approach in their actions or were these colleagues influenced by other mind frames quite
foreign to what we now call EBIP? Yet a different risk pertains to portraying EBIP as a new
movement divorced from historical context. Even now, Billings, Dana, Postell, Love and
Marshall attest to an EBIP orientation within our profession’s history. Clearly, EBIP did not
spontaneously generate within the past decade in response to the EBM movement as some
simplistically try to argue. The values and experiences of our professional “ancestors” have
shaped what we now call EBIP.

14. Marsh asked river what did you do that you are
clear?
Said: I passed.