The second half of 2022 was a time of much change at the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA). We hope to lead this journal with transparency, and in this spirit, we wanted to give you an overview of what we have done since we were appointed as co-editors in chief (co-EICs) in June 2022.

The Medical Library Association (MLA) has defined 7 domain hubs aligning to different areas of information professional practice. To assess the extent to which content in the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) is reflective of these domains, we analyzed the magnitude of JMLA articles aligning to each domain hub over the last 10 years. Bibliographic records for 453 articles published in JMLA from 2010 to 2019 were downloaded from Web of Science and screened using Covidence software. Thirteen articles were excluded during the title and abstract review because they failed to meet the inclusion criteria, resulting in 440 articles included in this review. The title and abstract of each article were screened by two reviewers, each of whom assigned the article up to two tags corresponding to MLA domain hubs (i.e., information services, information management, education, professionalism and leadership, innovation and research practice, clinical support, and health equity & global health). These results inform the MLA community about our strengths in health information professional practice as reflected by articles published in JMLA.

The great challenge medical library professionals are facing is how we evolve and respond to the emerging digital era. If we successfully understand and adapt to the emerging digital information environment, medical librarians/Health Information Professionals (HIPs) can play an even greater role in the advance in the health care of our nation and its residents. The opportunities and challenges are at the level we successfully responded to in the late 1960's and the 1970's under the leadership of the National Library of Medicine with its MEDLARS/Medline programs and Medical Library Assistance Act which enabled medical libraries to enter what I have referred to as The Golden Age of Medical Libraries. In this presentation, I focused on the transition of the health-related print Knowledge-Based Information base to the emerging digital health-related ecosystem. I review how this transition is being driven by evolving information technology. The development of "data driven health care" built on this emerging information ecosystem is being led by the National Library of Medicine's 2017-2027 Strategic plan and the Medical Library Association's programs in support of developing medical librarian/HIP's training, skills, and services to support their users access and use of this rapidly expanding health information ecosystem. I then present a brief description of the digital health information ecosystem that is just starting to emerge and the emerging new roles and services HIPs and their libraries are developing to support effective institutional access and use.

OBJECTIVE: There is little doubt that there are currently obstacles in measuring the impact of the history of medicine within medical training. Consequently, there is a clear need to support a vision that can historicize Euro-Western medicine, leading to a greater understanding of how the medical world is a distinct form of reality for those who are about to immerse themselves in the study of medicine. METHODS: History teaches that changes in medicine are due to the processes inherent to the interaction among individuals, institutions, and society rather than individual facts or individual authors. RESULTS: Therefore, we cannot ignore the fact that the expertise and know-how developed during medical training are the final product of relationships and memories that have a historical life that is based social, economic, and political aspects. CONCLUSION: Moreover, these relationships and memories have undergone dynamic processes of selection and attribution of meaning, as well as individual and collective sharing, which have also been confronted with archetypes that are still able to influence clinical approaches and medical therapy today.

OBJECTIVE: Medical care for cancer is increasingly directed by genomic laboratory testing for alterations in the tumor genome that are significant for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. Uniquely in medicine, providers must search the biomedical literature for each patient to determine the clinical significance of these alterations. Access to published scientific literature is frequently subject to high fees, with access limited to institutional subscriptions. We sought to investigate the degree to which the scientific literature is accessible to clinical cancer genomics providers, and the potential role of university and hospital system libraries in information access for cancer care. METHODS: We identified 265 journals that were accessed during the interpretation and reporting of clinical test results from 1,842 cancer patients at the University Health Network (Toronto, Canada). We determined the degree of open access for this set of clinically important literature, and for any journals not available through open access we surveyed subscription access at seven academic hospital systems and at their affiliated universities. RESULTS: This study found that nearly half (116/265) of journals have open access mandates that make articles freely available within one year of release. For the remaining subscription access journals, universities provided a uniformly high level of access, but access available through hospital system collections varied widely. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of different modes of access to the use of the scientific literature in clinical practice and points to challenges that must be overcome as genomic medicine grows in scale and complexity.

OBJECTIVES: Information professionals have supported medical providers, administrators and decision-makers, and guideline creators in the COVID-19 response. Searching COVID-19 literature presented new challenges, including the volume and heterogeneity of literature and the proliferation of new information sources, and exposed existing issues in metadata and publishing. An expert panel developed best practices, including recommendations, elaborations, and examples, for searching during public health emergencies. METHODS: Project directors and advisors developed core elements from experience and literature. Experts, identified by affiliation with evidence synthesis groups, COVID-19 search experience, and nomination, responded to an online survey to reach consensus on core elements. Expert participants provided written responses to guiding questions. A synthesis of responses provided the foundation for focus group discussions. A writing group then drafted the best practices into a statement. Experts reviewed the statement prior to dissemination. RESULTS: Twelve information professionals contributed to best practice recommendations on six elements: core resources, search strategies, publication types, transparency and reproducibility, collaboration, and conducting research. Underlying principles across recommendations include timeliness, openness, balance, preparedness, and responsiveness. CONCLUSIONS: The authors and experts anticipate the recommendations for searching for evidence during public health emergencies will help information specialists, librarians, evidence synthesis groups, researchers, and decision-makers respond to future public health emergencies, including but not limited to disease outbreaks. The recommendations complement existing guidance by addressing concerns specific to emergency response. The statement is intended as a living document. Future revisions should solicit input from a broader community and reflect conclusions of meta-research on COVID-19 and health emergencies.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate if the included references in a set of completed systematic reviews are indexed in Ovid MEDLINE and Ovid Embase, and how many references would be missed if we were to constrict our literature searches to one of these sources, or the two databases in combination. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study where we searched for each included reference (n = 4,709) in 274 reviews produced by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health to find out if the references were indexed in the respective databases. The data was recorded in an Excel spreadsheet where we calculated the indexing rate. The reviews were sorted into eight categories to see if the indexing rate differs from subject to subject. RESULTS: The indexing rate in MEDLINE (86.6%) was slightly lower than in Embase (88.2%). Without the MEDLINE records in Embase, the indexing rate in Embase was 71.8%. The highest indexing rate was achieved by combining both databases (90.2%). The indexing rate was highest in the category "Physical health - treatment" (97.4%). The category "Welfare" had the lowest indexing rate (58.9%). CONCLUSION: Our data reveals that 9.8% of the references are not indexed in either database. Furthermore, in 5% of the reviews, the indexing rate was 50% or lower.

OBJECTIVE: The FAC (Focus, Amplify, Compose) rubric for assessing medical students' question formulation skills normally accompanies our Evidence Based Practice (EBP) training. The combined training and assessment rubric have improved student scores significantly. How much does the rubric itself contribute to improved student scores? This study sought to measure student improvement using the rubric either with or without a linked 25-minute training session. METHODS: Randomized Controlled Trial. The authors tested the hypothesis that a 25-minute training session combined with use of a rubric would lead to higher scores than a brief explanation of this rubric alone. All 72 participating second-year medical students had a question formulation rubric briefly explained to them following a pre-test. Students in the intervention groups were taught how to formulate EBP questions for 25 minutes using the rubric followed with another 30 minutes of EBP search training. Students in the control group only received the 30 minutes of EBP search training in their small group labs. All 72 students took the post-test in which they formulated a question in response to a clinical vignette. Statistical analysis to test the hypothesis consisted of a two-sample paired t-test to measure between-group differences. DISCUSSION: Both the intervention and control groups performed significantly better on the post-test for question formulation skills than on the pre-test. When analyzed by extent of individual improvement between pre- and post-tests using a two-sample paired t-test for between group differences, the control group students receiving only a brief explanation of the rubric performed the same statistically (intervention 37.7 versus 37.4 control) as the intervention group students who received the same brief explanation followed by a 25-minute active learning training session. Thus, the results provided no support of the hypothesis that the extra 25-minute training improved post-test scores. The rubric itself contributed similarly to the intervention groups students' improvement as the combined rubric and training for control group students. This finding could potentially save scarce curricular time. KEY MESSAGES: The FAC question formulation rubric and training significantly improves medical students' EBP question quality. The FAC rubric coupled with only a 5-minute explanation can be effective. In a crowded medical school curriculum, the rubric and brief explanation might save valued time for other purposes.

BACKGROUND: Librarians at Preston Medical Library sought to understand whether marketing research techniques could be adapted to libraries to better understand what patrons value. Specifically, this study sought to learn why patrons continue using a consumer health information service, develop insights to improve the service, and a methodology to use with other patron groups. CASE PRESENTATION: Librarian researchers conducted customer value research using laddering interviews, an interview technique utilized in marketing research to learn users' goals in using a product or service. The PML research team interviewed six frequent users of a medical library's consumer health information service. Researchers conducted laddering interviews, covering patron views of basic attributes of the service, leading on to consequences of their interaction with it, and finally discussing what they hoped to achieve in using the service. The results were visualized in customer value hierarchy diagrams, graphically showing relationships between valued attributes of a product or service, how the patron used it, and how that helped patrons achieve goals. This allowed the research team to identify which features of service contribute the most to patron satisfaction. CONCLUSION: Customer value learning utilizing laddering interviews enables librarians to see their service through the patrons' eyes, focusing on those aspects of the service that they view as most important. This study allowed librarians to learn that users desired to feel more in control of their health and gain peace of mind by obtaining trusted information. The library's work in providing information leads to self-empowerment for these patrons.

BACKGROUND: During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many consumer health libraries were forced to close their doors to patrons. At the Health Information Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, the physical space closed, while health information services continued to be provided via phone and email. To examine the impact of lack of access to a physical library for consumer health information, researchers analyzed the number of health information requests pre-COVID-19 pandemic compared to during the initial phase of the pandemic. CASE PRESENTATION: Data from an internal database was collected and analyzed. Researchers divided the data into three time periods: March 2018 to February 2019 (Phase 1), March 2019 to February 2020 (Phase 2), and March 2020 to February 2021 (Phase 3). Data was de-identified and duplicate entries were removed. The type of interaction and request topics were reviewed in each phase. CONCLUSION: In Phase 1, there were 535 walk-ins to request health information and 555 walk-ins in Phase 2. In Phase 3, there were 40 walk-ins. The number of requests through phone and email varied but remained steady. There was a 61.56% decrease in requests between Phase 1 and Phase 3 while there was a 66.27% decrease between Phase 2 and Phase 3 due to the lack of walk-in requests. The number of phone and email requests did not increase despite the closure of the physical library space to the public. Access to the physical space plays a significant role in providing health information requests to patients and family members.

"MAN PUT HIS TONGUE AGAINST REFRIGERATOR PIPE AND GOT IT FROZEN; HAVE THAWED IT OUT AND IT IS NOW BLISTERED AND SWOLLEN BUT NOT PAINFUL. ARRIVING HONOLULU FRIDAY; HOW CAN I HELP HIM MEANWHILE?" Thus read a message relayed via radiogram across the ocean to the physician stationed at the Seamen's Church Institute's (SCI) KDKF radio station, established by the Institute in 1920 on top of its thirteen-story seafarer services center at the southern tip of Manhattan. Though radio was in its infancy, radio telegraphy had already proven its revolutionary power, featuring prominently in far more serious maritime emergencies such as the sinking of Titanic. SCI's KDKF radio station aimed to address a less dramatic but no less important problem in blue water navigation: access to medical care.