Submitted by Elizabeth Fine
Bio-Medical Library, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis
Strong searching abilities are arguably the most important skill set for health sciences librarians. It takes a great deal of time and practice to become an expert searcher, and cultivating a standard level of search competence and comfort among staff is a challenge in a large organization. This poster details the process of "Search Camp," the method used at the University of Minnesota's Health Sciences Libraries to help all levels of staff continually develop and refine search skills.
Search Camp is part of a regularly scheduled "reference training" meeting that brings together all staff who have contact with users seeking information-whether they are reference desk staff or liaison librarians. The participants are a mix of professional and paraprofessional staff. During Search Camp, the leader ("counselor") distributes one or two real search questions in the form they were received from patrons. Questions are selected that demonstrate widely applicable search elements. The meeting participants ("campers") are asked to think about how they would respond to the question in different scenarios: for example, if they could only respond by email or if they were actually working face-to-face with the requestor.
Campers pair up with laptops and work on the questions. After sufficient time (usually 30-40 minutes) the counselor reconvenes the campers and leads a group discussion of approaches to the search questions. This hands-on group format has worked very well, and it gives all levels of staff a chance to use real questions to continually practice and refine search skills, in a collegial, low-pressure environment.
Here's a sample question received from a patron:
"My topic is education versus isolation of incarcerated inmates and staff with tuberculosis and the role of occupational health nurses to prevent the spread of disease. I am most interested in the occupational health aspects of managing TB."