The UTHSC Library and the Tennessee Clinical and Translational Science Institute (TN-CTSI) won the top research award at the Southern Chapter of Medical Library Association 2022 annual meeting. The award was given for their collaborative educational series, “Library Research Training Series for Clinical Researchers”.
Library staff and institute directors Margaret Lynn and Derita Bran, developed the 11-session series in the fall of 2021, as part of the TN CTSI’s online education offerings. Hilary Jasmine, assistant professor and Research and Learning Services Librarian at the UTHSC Library, delivered a virtual presentation titled “Tapping into an Underserved Group: Clinical Researchers” at the conference, explaining the importance of the topic and the development of the project.
The project was born from a meeting between library staff and institute directors about digital commons. The CTSI got to know the depth of librarian expertise, services, and resources. The library in turn learned about the CTSI’s unique connections with clinical researchers across state campuses and the mid-south clinical research community. The CTSI shared their insights into clinical researchers’ areas of interest and concern, such as overcoming barriers to interprofessional on-campus collaboration, including people across state; faculty publication statistics and citations; easy access to information for research; the concept of a research guide for clinical research; and scholarly communication issues such as locating places to publish, general searching skills, and database citation/reference management.
Both entities realized they could collaboratively address these unmet needs by developing a specialized series geared to the specific needs of clinical researchers. They subsequently developed a training program to showcase library services, resources, and expertise that support clinical researchers. Session topics include information access, searching skills, and scholarly communications, among others.
The series was advertised across the state and attracted 157 attendees. All sessions were recorded and are available for on-demand for viewing on the CTSI website.