In my post June 9, 2005, End Results, I asked the question, "What becomes of your research?" Librarians tend know/hope that it is used for journal articles, patient care, patient education, department guides, etc. But we can't specifically prove it.

Ah, not any more....somebody has done it, and they have published their results in the Journal of the Medical Library Association.

Value of hospital libraries: the Fuld Campus study
Theresa M. Cuddy
J Med Libr Assoc. 2005 October; 93(4): 446–449

Theresa Cuddy sought to demonstrate the value of the Health Sciences Library at Capital Health System (CHS)/Fuld Campus to the administrators and institution it serves. To do this, library feedback forms were sent to library patrons about the library services they received. The forms asked for comments about the value of the specific information they received from the library.

One of the questions on the form was:

"We like to continuously validate and keep records of the contributions that the Health Sciences Library makes to the hospital and/or patient care. Can you please take a moment and write how the information you received helped yourself and ultimately the hospital?"

Cuddy was able to determine that her services were used to support patient care 32% of the time, support presentations 14% of the time, and develop policy and procedures 11% of the time.
All of you medical librarians looking to report better statistics to your administrations, you might look at developing this kind of analysis. Other librarians, business, academic, law, and special could probably adopt this method to work for their library too.