Australian supermodel?—A practical example of evidence‐based library and information practice (EBLIP)

There is little doubt that the ‘headlines’ from the recent 3rd International Evidence-Based Librarianship Conference in Brisbane, Australia rightly will be commanded by big-hitting systematic reviews such as those on information literacy1 and the quality of literature searches.2 For many, however, the real interest of such a conference lies in the more pragmatic examples of integrating research in practice. The reason for this is clear—few of us can aspire to taking time away from our routine work to embark upon such a major endeavour as a systematic review. In contrast, all of us can seek to incorporate research as a means to improve the quality of our day-to-day decision making. In fact, ‘don't give up your day job’ was one of two unofficial mottoes for the Brisbane Conference (along with ‘you should get out more’!). Necessarily, producers of research are few while potential consumers of research, that is all practising library and information professionals, are legion. Indeed the Research Policy Statement of the US Medical Library Association asserts that ‘Individual … librarians must apply the results of research routinely to library and information service practice, to the development of information policy, and to other information issues important to … institutions’.3 Seldom can there be greater testimony to the fact that the ‘devil lies in the detail’ than in the implications of that single word routinely! It was in meeting this particular challenge that a group of staff from Central Coast Health (CCH) Library Services in Australia outlined how they had followed the five steps of evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP) within a typical (one might almost say, mundane) area of library activity. By signalling a realistic way forward for our profession in using research in practice, creating the ‘supermodel’ of our title, these Australian health librarians provided inspiration (as well as sensory stimulation) for their audience during a presentation creatively entitled ‘Adding SPICE to our library intranet site: a recipe to enhance usability’.4 The first message to emerge from the presentation was that an EBIP project does not suddenly materialize from within a vacuum. First, there needs to be some co-ordinated attempt to develop a climate within which such a project, or in this case such projects, can thrive. In 2004, Anne Brice and international collaborators observed: ‘Getting research into practice … requires relevant skills to be built into professional development and educational initiatives supported by the development of practical tools and techniques’.5 Lisa Cotter and colleagues thus described how they had been lured to the Facilitated Online Learning as an Interactive Opportunity (FOLIO) e-learning course (http://www.nehl.nhs.uk/folio) on evidence-based librarianship, sponsored by the then National electronic Library for Health and extended to the international community, in the mistaken belief that this was a course about supporting the evidence-based practice of health professionals! Notwithstanding this initial confusion, two of the team had completed this pilot course and had been enthused to try to model this approach in their practice. To sustain this momentum locally in the Gosford area of Sydney, they had hosted a series of six self-directed evidence-based librarianship (EBL) workshops for health, special and academic librarians to introduce and develop their understanding of EBL, to identify ways in which they could implement the process into their daily work, and to ‘skill up’ before attending and presenting at the conference in Brisbane. This combination of international ‘catalyst’ and local consolidation provided a knowledge base of materials to support the technical process while ensuring a sense of local ownership of the process. In 2004 the CCH Library Services staff determined their section of the organization's intranet had outgrown its original structure and purpose. The library staff identified a need for a thorough revision of both architecture and content in order to create a more usable site. They also saw this project as an opportunity to model the application of EBLIP within their service. The first stage of EBLIP involves re-framing the problem into an answerable question. While several frameworks exist for this process within health-care and related disciplines, the project team decided to employ the SPICE anatomy developed specifically for library-orientated questions.6 This not only provided a starting point for meaningful definition of the topic to be investigated, but also yielded a protracted visual metaphor throughout the presentation. Using the SPICE framework the problem—a user-unfriendly intranet site—was re-framed into the following research question: ‘How can the usability of the Central Coast Health Library Services’ intranet site be improved to enhance the site's effectiveness as a gateway to the library's services and resources, for the staff and students of the organization?’ The individual components of this question were defined as in Table 1. In their presentation, the team rehearsed the benefits of formulating the question. They argued that, although it would be natural to consider this and related questions throughout the life cycle of their project, articulating these at an earlier stage had allowed them to focus more clearly on the true desired outcome of the project. An additional observation made by the team was that, because the evidence-based practice cycle was paralleled by similar cycles in relation to project management, quality assurance and continuing professional development, it became feasible to attempt to integrate these processes more fully. While such similarities have indeed been remarked upon within evidence-based practice more generally, this insight into the nature of EBLIP provides a potential future route towards selling the benefits of the paradigm to library and institutional management. Evidence-based library and information practice, now incidentally emerging as the preferred consensual term for the paradigm within our profession, involves the integration of evidence from research studies with reports from library users and the observations of library staff. Again, this particular project elegantly modelled the contribution that all these sources can potentially make to an evidence-based decision. In this case, evidence was taken from the literature, scenario-based usability tests, usability checklist analyses, and feedback from library staff and clients. In the latter instance, an online survey undertaken at the start of the project invited feedback and suggestions by library intranet site users. Later in the project cycle, volunteers for usability testing also supplied qualitative data reflecting their feelings about the usability of the site immediately after each usability test session. The third stage of EBLIP involves evaluating the rigour and relevance of the evidence, typically employing checklists as tools for a consistent approach across studies. The main outcomes from literature retrieval were: the identification of distinctions between usefulness, effectiveness and usability; examples of usability testing in practice; and the identification of web-design guidelines. In addition to resources describing practical approaches to usability testing,7 the search uncovered Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines,8 and the Raward Library Usability Analysis Tool (Raward, R. A. A Study of Best Practice Design Guidelines and the Development of a Usability Analysis Tool for the Evaluation of Australian Academic Library Web Sites. Unpublished thesis from the University of Canberra, Australia, 2002). This stage proved the most problematic with regard to the practicalities of the EBLIP process. Neither existing checklists from within health care nor the limited range of checklists currently being developed within information practice provided a suitable framework for investigation of study quality. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the team sought to evaluate the quality of each article, identify its corresponding level of evidence and determine its contextual relevance to the problem at hand. In doing this, they found themselves asking the following pragmatic questions: Is this a study we can use/adapt? Is the study valid/reliable/applicable? Having analysed the evidence, the team was in a position to implement the recommended changes, and to publish the redeveloped and highly usable intranet site. The Raward Library Usability Analysis Tool, identified from the literature search, was applied consistently to different versions of the library's intranet site, with the intention that this becomes a regularly used tool for audit of each major revision of the site throughout the project life cycle. Each application of the Raward Tool would result in a usability score and accompanying recommendations for improved usability. The project cycle was to conclude with evaluation and guidelines for the ongoing maintenance and development of the site. Again, this continuous cycle of development, implementation and evaluation9 corresponds to the stages of the EBLIP process. As previously observed in this column, ‘the evidence-base cycle will not be complete unless, once having implemented our changes (to a web or intranet site), we put in place mechanisms for ongoing evaluation’.10 The team also intends to emphasize the generalizability of their approach to similar, related projects. This is to be achieved through production of a project report, detailing the literature review, methodology, documentation, results and recommendations, towards the conclusion of the project life cycle. Of course, presentation of the project at the EBL Conference in Brisbane marks a first attempt at wider dissemination to the international community. As our ‘supermodel’ title implies, this project has allowed the librarians of CCH Library Services to explore the realities and practicalities of the EBLIP process within the constraints offered by a library practitioner role. Having identified relevant and answerable questions from within one of the domains of EBLIP, they pursued a process that brought together internationally validated guidelines and tools with locally derived data and feedback. The implications of this project for development of the EBLIP paradigm are significant. Rather than view EBLIP as a bolt-on extra, that is only to be pursued when time and resources allow, Lisa Cotter and her colleagues have demonstrated that the process can be integrated within the accepted structure of the project management cycle. They have also countered claims, frequently made, that ‘there is no evidence’ albeit within an area fortuitously populated by one of the rare examples of evidence-based guidelines for library and information practice.10 At the same time, this presentation was not some anodyne or cosmeticized account of the ‘here is one that I prepared earlier’ variety. At each stage of the process, the team encountered minor obstacles or technical difficulties in the execution of EBLIP. These included problems in accessing the evidence and in its subsequent appraisal, limitations of the available tools and constraints relating to their own skills and competencies. Notwithstanding such constraints, in thus profiling ‘L (as in Library)—the Body (of evidence)’ our colleagues from Australia have ensured that many library practitioners will feel that it is indeed worth getting out of bed for less than a £10 000 research project!