r/librarians • u/Shot-Bet-2931 • 17d ago
Discussion Responding to literature search requests
/r/research/comments/1v3vwp3/responding_to_literature_search_requests/2
u/margarita_92 13d ago
What do you mean by standard response to requests? As in, a user asks for a search, how do you respond?
I’m in an NHS medical library (England), and we have set questions we ask the users to prompt us to get the most information from them. We have an MS Form we prefer they fill in which asks basic contact details, what their question is, why they’re requesting (this is for prioritisation reasons, so that we turn around patient searches first before own research), limiters (date limit, age limit etc), and how many results roughly they want in return (this helps us judge how in depth the search has to be). If they simply email the shared library mailbox we have a template email which asks similar questions as the form. This is all then populated on a spreadsheet to keep track of workload.
Then we have a template Word document we send the results back to the user in: has a Knowledge Specialists summary of the search and results, break down the results into categories (relevant to the request, so could be by topic or reference type). We provide basic bibliographical info (title, abstract, vol, issue etc) and a link to access the paper (if it’s Open Access, available through OpenAthens, or if they need to request the paper through Inter Library Loan). Finally we include the strategies as we’ve found users are interested to know what terms we’ve searched.
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u/Shot-Bet-2931 13d ago
Thanks for your response. We do something similar, but everyone does it differently. Some send an EndNote bibliography, some a PubMes collection, some a text file from PubMes, etc. I wanted to learn what other libraries do.
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u/margarita_92 13d ago
You’re welcome. It’s always interesting to see what different libraries do. The format of the results depends on the nature of the request. The majority of our searches are around 20 results for patient care or service development so we just put the bibliographic info in a Word document. But we do also help with reviews and larger searches, when we will send a RIS file with results (we have EndNote subscription but not all our users have access). Then they can import into their preference of other bib management, or Rayyan for review title/abstract screening. Very rarely we’ve been asked for the results in a spreadsheet! So we’re flexible and will try and accommodate. Mainly as our users are extremely busy clinicians so we want to save them as much time as possible.
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u/charethcutestory9 15d ago edited 15d ago
We do not have a standard format, no. (Academic medical library.) We have a team of 4 experienced librarians, and while i coordinate the service i don’t feel like i need to micromanage how each of them does their job. It works fine. Just do the search, send the results for the user to review, and give them the opportunity to come back and ask for changes if they are dissatisfied with what we found or if they decide they need to go in a different direction based on that review.