Keywords: procedures management, hospital libraries, health and life sciences libraries, quality standards, computer literature searching process.
Objective: The authors intend to define computer literature searching process , their indicators and their quality standards.
Material and Methods: A project to define "computer literature searching process", which was started in 2003 by the medical libraries of Fundación Hospital Alcorcón and Hospital Severo Ochoa of Leganés (Madrid). The standard process map of a hospital library was defined and one of the key processes was selected: "computer literature searching process" for a gradual implementation at our libraries. This service that generates a strong tutoring demand from users as well as a high request of documents. For that purpose, we defined the required activities, flow diagram and quality standards of the procedure and monitored them during one year (from June 2003 to June 2004).
Results:
Output indicators: computer literature searching process:
1.- Operative indicators:
- number of fulfilled searches per year
- number of fulfilled searches per year, classified by the clinical areas that requested them and related to number of potential users in each area.
- number of fulfilled searches in the last semester of the previous year compared to the number of fulfilled searches in the first semester of the running year.
2.- Efficacy indicators:
- number of days since the request was done, until the results are given, divided into the number of searches.
- number of searches fulfilled using foreign databases, compared to the number fulfilled working with spanish databases.
- number of Medline searches versus number of EBMR searches.
3.- Impact indicators.
- number of e-mail search request versus number of those required in person.
- number of users who demand this service divided by the number of potential users, considering they are not always the same ones.
- use given to this computer literature searching process ( users/ number of requests done by each of them).
The procedure´s results are being monitored currently (since June 2003). Once the project is finished we will define each indicator´s quality standard, and present them during the congress.
|