Teaching skills in Literature Searching & Referencing at the Undergraduate level –  a must!

Teaching skills in Literature Searching & Referencing at the Undergraduate level – a must!

For years I have mentioned to academicians that literature searching and referencing skills are best taught in the undergraduate days. In the early days the response I often got was - "UG students should first study text books. They can learn all this later". Then things changed a bit. Conferences for undergrad students were held. Students presented posters and oral talks. The ICMR STS projects penetrated further and more colleges started having more students participate.  QMed was invited to conduct workshops in several events. And in every workshop the feedback from UG students was almost overwhelming. They were thrilled to…
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Health Science Librarians – the NLM (USA) and vaccines

Health Science Librarians – the NLM (USA) and vaccines

Early in March the Director of the National Library of Medicine or NLM (USA) - Dr Patti Brennan wrote this blog post - Vaccines, Vaccinations, and NLM. She describes briefly her own journey to getting the vaccine. More interestingly she described how libraries in the US helped the public getting their vaccine, how the NLM played a big role in helping get the vaccine to all. In India we are aware of teachers being roped in for election duties and more. I wonder whether we would ever think of librarians being involved in vaccination efforts? Let us learn what they…
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Health Sciences Librarians – II. Involvement in teaching students about EBM

Health Sciences Librarians – II. Involvement in teaching students about EBM

This is my second post about elevating Health Sciences Libraries and Librarians in India.  Here I would like to share an example from an article in the Journal of the Medical Library Association (USA) - about a study by a librarian and his medical colleagues.  (Read my first post here) This article discusses how a health sciences librarian conducted an introductory course on EBM for first year medical students and how he specifically did an intervention to improve their ability to "formulate an answerable question". Asking an answerable question is an art that one learns with practice and of course…
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