In 2014, the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Libraries administered the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey to our faculty to measure their changing needs and perceptions of library resources. The survey, consisting of seven modules including the health sciences module, was distributed across our campus. The health sciences module targets faculty with patient or clinical care responsibilities. At this time, few health sciences libraries have used this instrument. Survey questions focused on attitudes and skills related to evidence-based scholarly resources as well as access and use of other library services and resources.
Of course we all know students’ research skills especially in finding evidence based scholarly research are often lacking. This came out clearly from the results of the Ithaka survey. Again we were not surprised to see that faculty also see these research skills as a very important aspect of the students’ learning. However, it is still amazing that a large number of faculty did not see teaching the skill of finding evidence based scholarly materials and research skills as primarily the librarians’ function. A timely reminder for us to continue informing our faculty that we indeed have are more than capable to teach students research skills especially when it comes to evidence based practice. What a great opportunity for us to collaborate with our faculty and remind them about everything else we bring to the table!
Hopefully more health sciences libraries will use this survey instrument to measure their faculty perceptions because I think it would be interesting to compare the VCU’s Tompkins-McCaw Library’s findings with other libraries that have surveyed their health sciences faculty.