As a medical librarian in my professional life, I am very familiar with the idea of using evidence to make decisions. Evidence-Based Medicine has been the standard in the field for many years now, and I think it is great that other fields - like librarianship - are embracing the approach.

The entire development process of my Capstone project has been a fascinating exercise in dimension 3.1, Identify Professional Problems. As I will explain a but further in PLO 7, there were some challenging intra- and inter-departmental issues that came up in the planning process, which greatly affected the project I eventually settled on, and required me to find a new project quickly. I was able to combine my interest in user research (I am in the User Research Interest Group at my workplace) and a project that I knew was in the early stages of planning and could use some input from actual users. One reason that I was ready to pivot so quickly was my experience in LIS 636, Web Production & Useability for Librarians. Though focused on the web, the useability content of that class enabled me to jump into my current project with very little need for research and training.

One of my favorite assignments in LIS 640 was one to analyze and evaluate an information organization system of our choice, and I think it speaks to dimension 3.2, Gather and Evaluate Evidence. At the time -- like many folks early in the pandemic -- I was playing a lot of the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I was intimately familiar with the quirks and challenges of the multiple systems the game offered to organize your inventory of tools, outfits, furnishings, and more. I was really excited to apply the lessons of information organization to a system I was so familiar with as part of my recreation and relaxation.

The Capstone project I am working on now will soon offer a first-hand, real world opportunity to put dimension 3.3 (Apply Evidence to Design Solutions) into practice. The data that I collect as a part of this user study will directly influence planning and decision making at my place of work, and while the implementation of any changes that result from user feedback will likely happen outside the timeframe of my Capstone, I can already see how exciting it will be to have played such a direct role in shaping my professional space.

My Independent Study project investigating the subfield of Clinical Librarianship included a great deal of research into using evidence to select an appropriate technological tool or approach. There are a range of ways that clinical librarian (or informationist) services can be provided, from in-person “bedside” to remote telephone or chat. The literature includes a great deal of comparisons of different service models, including technological tools and strategies, which I examined in my research paper.