SLA Poster Presentation: Evaluating an Embedded Program

Some SC/MLA chapter members are presenting a poster at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, June 12-14. Even if you can't make it to the City of Brotherly Love, you can still read the full abstract and download their poster.

Poster Title: Evaluating an Embedded Program: Increasing Awareness, Expanding Services, and Fulfilling Patron Needs

Authors: Lindsay Blake, Darra Ballance, Vicki Burchfield, Maryska Connolly-Brown, Kathy Davies, Julie K. Gaines, Kim Mears & Peter Shipman

Institution: Robert B. Greenblatt MD, Library, Augusta University, Augusta 


Poster objective: The research project objective is provide a multifaceted, generalizable toolkit for evaluating the effectiveness of an embedded program. An embedded librarian program was evaluated using a toolkit which includes traditional activity data and a survey aimed at measuring use of services, awareness of the embedded program, and satisfaction with embedded librarians and services.

Methods: An initial national survey of librarians in the health sciences and a literature review identified few evaluation tools for embedded activities, leading the librarians to begin developing an embedded evaluation toolkit to evaluate the success of their embedded program. The evaluation toolkit consists of data collected locally through LibAnalytics software on various service transactions, and a survey aimed to measure awareness, use of, and satisfaction with embedded librarians and services.

Survey development was guided by consultations with the university’s educational research institute. The survey was reviewed for content and internal structure elements to help increase its validity. Qualtrics software was used to distribute the survey to students, residents, and faculty in April 2015.  Statistical analysis was performed and this data was combined with locally collected statistics on individual interactions, services provided, teaching opportunities, inclusion activities, and inter-professional activities.

Results: The survey response rate was 10% with 381/4,408 completed surveys. Over 58% of participants who completed the survey reported being aware of their embedded librarian. The majority of faculty strongly agreed that embedded librarians saved them time and were an integral part of their group.

Results from this project were presented at the 2015 SC/MLA and 2016 MLA conferences. A poster format was developed for the 2016 SLA conference. SLA has a newly formed Embedded Librarian Caucus and interest in our methods and findings is high among both corporate and academic librarians.

Please contact the authors with any questions you may have!