I have written up my reflections on this year’s UHMLG Spring Forum, and as always you can read them on my blog.
Information Literacy
Grey Literature
On the 9th March I attended two training sessions about grey literature.
It’s a bit of a grey area – how to use grey literature in health and care
The first session I attended was presented by Deena Maggs and Lynsey Hawker of the Kings Fund. The theme of their presentation was “It’s a bit of a grey area – how to use grey literature in health and care”.
The presentation began with a definition of what grey literature is. The definition used was:
“Grey literature stands for manifold document types produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats that are protected by intellectual property rights, of sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by library holdings or institutional repositories, but not controlled by commercial publishers i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.” Twelfth International Conference on Grey Literature – Prague (2010)
The Kings Fund use grey literature often in the course of their work and the publications that they produce are themselves grey literature.
It was recommended that when searching the Kings Fund library datababase searches are kept simple. If more complex searches are required the Kings Fund database is included in the HMIC database.
Appraising grey literature can be a challenge. One way to do this is to use the CRAAP test.
Currency – the timeliness of the information
Relevance – The importance of the information for your needs
Authority – The source of the information
Accuracy – The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content
Purpose – The reason the information exists
It can be a challenge to encourage researchers to include grey literature in their research. Grey literature is perceived as being not as reliable as published research and it can be harder to find relevant grey literature than research published in traditional journals and books. Grey literature can be produced using robust methods, such as the reports produced by the Kings Fund and other similar organisations. Information professionals need to have the confidence to encourage researchers to include grey literature in their research. To make sure that the researchers have realistic expectations from the beginning of the research process.
Google can be a useful tool to help identify grey literature. If specific sites need to be searched such as UK Parliament or gov.uk it can be easier to use the Google site search rather than the websites own search function.
Some issues using web searches for grey literature searches are that it may be difficult to find final versions of documents. Websites often upload draft versions or documents and then do not remove them when the final version is published. During a discussion on this topic librarians reported having to contact organisations to try and track down the correct version.
There was a discussion about how Future NHS can be used to support research. This is a virtual collaboration platform for NHS staff. Many teams share and publish their work on this site, so it is a good place to find various types of projects being undertaken and learn about developments and discussions taking place within the NHS.
Decolonising and grey literature
The second grey literature session I attended was “Decolonising and grey literature” delivered by John Barbrook from the University of Lancaster.
This session followed on well from the earlier session as the focus was on how to decolonise the literature that we include in research, systematic reviews in particular.
It is important that we don’t only include research conducted in the West about the “Global South” but that we include research produced in the “Global South”. It can be a challenge to include this type of grey literature as platforms are much smaller, can be switched on and off so that they are there one day and not the next. This type of grey literature won’t necessarily be in English so searches may need to be in several different languages to ensure that all the relevant information is captured.
When developing searches the terminology used should be carefully considered, if it is Eurocentric this may be a barrier to finding relevant grey literature. Many types of review make it much easier to include this type of information, such as realist reviews and qualitative reviews.
As in the first session it was emphaisised how useful Google can be to find this type of information if searched correctly. Using advanced searches to restrict to site codes, publication types and date limits. Lancaster University have included more detained information about how to search Google on the Google searching section of their Decolonising Literature Searches LibGuide.
There is more information from Lancaster about how to decolonise literature searches on their Decolonising Literature Searches LibGuide.
A recording of this presentation (Decolonising and grey literature) is available on YouTube.
Decolonisation and grey literature workshop
I attended a webinar on decolonisation and grey literature. I have written up a summary, and some suggested next steps, on my own blog.
Open Access: Where Next? conference
I attended a day conference on open research. The conference’s theme was Open Access: Where Next? You can read my impressions and plans for next steps on my blog.
Navigating the Deep Web
You can find my report on last week’s Navigating the Deep Web workshop here on my own blog.
Innovation in libraries: USTLG meeting
My write-up for the USTLG meeting, a day conference at which Eleanor and I presented a paper, can be read here on my own blog.
Health Literacy Awareness training
This post is a joint effort by all four who attended the Health Literacy Awareness course last Wednesday.
What the course was about
On Wednesday four of us (Eleanor, Greg, Veronica and Jasmina) attended a Health Literacy Awareness workshop in Fulbourn, delivered by Kathryn Aylward and Laura Wilkes. The workshop consisted of their presentations followed with group activities and discussions.
Why we attended the course
In the future we intend to deliver Health Literacy Awareness training to both healthcare practitioners and university students. We attended the workshop with this goal in mind.
What we learnt from the course
On the health literacy awareness training I learnt about how we can influence others and address some of the issues surrounding low health literacy. The influence that we can have can be broken down into three areas: a bottom up approach, top down approach and raising awareness.
Bottom up approach
The library wouldn’t be as involved in this section but we can still support it. There are programmes such as the Skilled for Health programme which aims to improve literacy and numeracy skills by teaching them in a health context. We can suggest resources such as jargon busters to help make patient leaflets more accessible.
Top down approach
The library can have more involvement with this area, we can run knowledge cafes to promote discussions about health literacy amongst clinicians. We can talk about teach back so that the clinician can check the patient’s understanding of the information they have just been given.
Raising awareness
The library has an opportunity to reach out to hospital staff and raise an awareness of the issues surrounding health literacy. This is what Greg, Jasmina, Veronica and Eleanor are going to be doing by planning and delivering health literacy awareness training to colleagues, NHS staff and university students. (Eleanor)
*
I’m very much a fan of tools to improve clear communication such as ‘Drivel Defence’ (Part of the Plain English Campaign) and SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledegook). There are many way to express an idea and sometimes being a fan of strange and interesting words (guilty as charged) does not help get the point across. Have a look…
Links:
Drivel Defence
SMOG
(There are other online resources available that crunch the numbers but have not had a chance to vet them, so here’s Wikipedia.) (Greg)
*
It is important to tailor the training according to the audience. If delivering the training to clinicians or NHS workers, it is worth emphasising “keep it simple” and “chunk and check”, as not everyone has a background in Latin! If delivering a training to students focus should be more on where and how to find reliable information. (Jasmina)
*
For me the most useful aspect of the course was observing how Laura and Kathryn structured the course, the types of hands-on exercises they included to illustrate their various points about health literacy awareness. Normally when creating new training I like to use pre-existing content that has been developed by other people and seems to work well – there’s no point in reinventing the wheel if existing material serves its purpose and just needs a few tweaks to adapt to a local context. (Veronica)
What’s next?
The four of us will be meeting to plan our own version of this training, with the intention to have the sessions ready to go by September. We will be doing two slightly different versions of the training – one aimed at NHS professionals with a focus on how to communicate effectively to support patients with low levels of health literacy, and one aimed at University of Cambridge students (not just clinical students) to introduce them to resources that can support them in managing their health and improving their health literacy. But Medical Library colleagues won’t have to wait until October to see what we’ve been working on – we’re going to do trial runs of the course for our colleagues in the summer, so we can test the material and get your feedback.
UHMGL Spring Forum
I’ve written up my reflections on the UHMLG Spring Forum, which Eleanor, Isla and I attended on Friday. You can read them here on my blog.
Midlands and East NHS Libraries Event
I have written up my thoughts on yesterday’s Midlands and East of England NHS libraries event, here on my own blog.
Don’t Mention It
The CILN (Cambridge Information Literacy Network) forum reminded me of a board game called Taboo. The objective of the game is for a player to have their partners guess the word on the player’s card without using the word itself or five additional words listed on the card. The words that seemingly cannot be uttered by librarians are “information literacy”. Do we, or indeed should we, edit ourselves when communicating information literacy ideas to non-librarians? There was much reservation about mentioning the term “information literacy” or indeed any kind of language that might seem library-centric.
On the one hand, I completely agree that information should be delivered in jargon-free language that clearly demonstrates value to the user.
On the other hand, I wonder if an editor ever said to Stephen Hawking “Avoid using words like ‘quantum mechanics’ in your book because it may alienate the reader.”
Keeping in mind that jargon has two meanings:
- The language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group.
- Unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing.
The difference between these two definitions is often understanding or lack thereof. One person’s meaningless talk is another person’s technical vocabulary. One thing I have learnt is:
A sesquipedalian argot does not a colloquy make.
TRANSLATION: Using big, obscure words does not make for great conversations.
My thoughts on the matter are divergent.
Thought 1. We should not omit library-speak but instead educate learners in the technical terms relevant to information literacy.
Thought 2. Information literacy must be versed in the language relevant to the people who need it otherwise our policies will be divorced from those we aim to serve.
Do our current information literacy practices work? I’m guessing by the number of people/institutions trying to address this, that the answer is either no or ‘could be improved’. The best place to start, in my opinion, is empathy. Empathy for those learning information literacy and for those teaching. Could this be achieved by making information literacy affordable in terms of time & energy?
(MISSION IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC PLAYS)
Your mission, should you choose to accept it…
Information illiteracy runs rife. Fake news is on the horizon. Rigorous research coupled with judicious interpretive skills are desperately needed. Your only option is to air-drop your information literacy framework into remote areas. It needs to be accessible, flexible and instantly deployable before the first wave of fake news arrives. In order to avoid detection your information literacy framework must fit on a postcard. Should any librarians be harmed in this mission, I will disavow any knowledge of its existence. This blog post will self-delete in 5 seconds.
Medical Library Staff CPD 