1. Measuring the Value and Impact of Hospital Library Services
Penka Stoyanova, MISt
The Credit Valley Hospital and Trillium Health Centre

2. Partners in Crime 
Christina Woodward, MA, MLIS, Trillium Health Centre
Penka Stoyanova, MISt, The Credit Valley Hospital
Jeanna Hough, MA, MLIS, Halton Healthcare System

3. Library Survey - Background
September 2010 – CVH and THC
Timing
Projected merger of CVH and THC
Transition to teaching status
Development of new clinical initiatives aligned with strategic initiatives at both hospitals
Quality Patient Care, Access, Sustainability
Research, Education, Innovation
Results - Poster at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Health Libraries Association 2011 in Calgary, Alberta

4. Background – cont’d October 2011 – CVH, THC, HHS
Hypothesis – Our hospital libraries:
Support clinical and non-clinical evidence-based decision-making and practice
Support research and manuscript preparation (policies, procedures, publications)
Support staff and students in their learning and current awareness needs

5. Library Survey – Opportunity to…
Determine impact of library resources and services
Keep pace with changing user needs, identify user preferences and future needs
Continue examining our products and services with respect to new and emerging technologies
Document user perspective on the strengths of library products and services
Validate identified resource needs to our administration
Contribute to a needed pool of data in support of the value and impact of library services in hospitals

6. Methodology Survey instrument – three sections:
Resource
Knowledge
Utility
Questions concentrate on available resources, NOT librarian-mediated services, so that respondents can draw their own conclusions regarding the value/impact of the Library and its resources
When needed – questions were tailored to the individual hospital environment, but were presented so that we could still benchmark off one another
Copies of the survey are available upon request

7. Methodology – continued
Tools
Zoomerang Online Surveys and Polls (THC)
TooFAST (free assessment summary tool at CVH and HHS
For consistency data was exported in MS Excel for analysis
Distribution
Electronically from several access points at the hospitals intranet portals
Available in hard copy, with the data transcribed to Zoomerang and TooFAST by library staff
The survey was open for a period of about one month
Open to all affiliated physicians, clinical and non-clinical staff

8. Survey Participants CVH THC HHS Physician 17% 5% 0% Nurse 35% 29%
Pharmacist 7%
Allied Health
25%
36%
20%
Other, please specify:
18%
24%
47%
Total
100%

9. Impact of Library Services

10. How has your use of library services impacted your work in the past year?
23-41% - improved patient care decisions
3-6% - decreased adverse events, or led to changes in diagnostic tests
58-68% - supported their learning
35-50% supported best practice guidelines
36-48% - saved them time
6-8% - impacted cost reduction
35-54% - indicated ability to stay current in their area of interest
25-44% supported their projects

11. Library Resources – A Tool for…

12. Motivation for Information Seeking

13. Benchmarking

14. More Benchmarking

15. Utility of Library Services (Are you satisfied with …)

16. How often do you visit the library?

17. Is the Library intranet site easy to use?
Do you have remote access to Library resources?

18. Response Time Expectations

19. Discussion Some of the things we learned about our users:
What motivates their information seeking behaviour – acquiring new knowledge, patient care, best practices
Which of our resources they used most – access to full text, mediated literature searches, article requests
What they think about our space and decor
How often they visit the libraries
What are their response time expectations
What they think of library staff and the services we provide

20. Discussion – cont’d
Survey respondents indicated the significant role of the library in support of
Their learning, studies, and staying current
Best practice guidelines development and publications and other projects
Patient care decision making
Validated that resources do impact outcomes
Improved patient care decisions
Saved time
Led to cost reduction

21. CVH (2010 and 2011) What we do best?
Excellent services from library staff
competent, knowledge-able, have the right attitude
Library services support
clinical/non-clinical areas
evidence-based decision making
Fast and efficient services
What needs improvement?
Space is limited; number of workstations is not enough
Training/promotion of services
remote (offsite) access
ID cards access 24/7
group training sessions
Need for more online full-text resources
Customer Service:
“The staff of CVH are the most helpful and patient librarians I have experienced.”
“They are able to locate most items I am interested in obtaining – usually through interlibrary loans. They have also been able to purchase some key items relevant to my very specific field of practice. I could not do my work effectively without their assistance.”
“CVH Library staff are awesome – anytime I have a question they are very willing to offer assistance and [are] very thorough doing literature searches to assist in the advancement of best practice within our department as well as to assist in my current continuing education courses.”
Resources:
“The library resources are essential. The staff are extremely courteous and helpful. The resources available locally are extremely limited, however -- perhaps appropriate for a “community” hospital but woefully lacking if CVH ever hopes to call itself a “teaching” hospital.”
“Don’t physically use the library that much although use the databases electronically.”

22. Conclusions
Library usage stats convey only a part of the impact of libraries and their resources
Our users
See the Library’s role as significant (value of the library)
Validate that resources do impact outcomes
How will we use the results?
Present to senior administrators/budget purposes
Share with colleagues
CVH and THC – teaching status – need for more resources
HHS – building a new hospital – much bigger, need for more library resources

23. Thank you!
Melissa Paladines, Library Technician, CVH, for her enthusiastic support and assistance in running the survey
For supporting the launching of the survey at all three sites