Objectives: This scoping review identifies why and how health sciences libraries are integrating virtual reality (VR) and augmented (AR) technologies into their collections, spaces and workloads. This review aims to inform health sciences libraries at any stage in the adoption of AR/VR within their service provisions and spaces.
Methods: A peer-reviewed systematic search was conducted in Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, Education Source and LISTA for articles published between January 2016-February 2021. Article citation lists as well as the conference proceedings, paper and poster presentations for the Medical Library Association and Canadian Health Libraries Association, were also scanned. A total of 19 resources were included for data extraction from the 176 located through searching.
Results: Resulting resources varied in-depth as they included a number of formats such as program descriptions, columns and a conference poster, conference abstract and detailed primer. A number of themes emerged during review. This included reasons for AR/VR initiatives; types of initiatives; financing; hardware/software; collaboration; space; promotion; staffing; program assessment and future planning. Reasons for implementation were varied, however centered around collaboration - between the library, external departments, researchers and learners. How these initiatives launched showed some diversity, although shared commonalities including being highly dependent on financing, space, staffing and promotion.
Conclusion: The results showed that primarily academic health sciences libraries are currently integrating AR/VR into their workloads. Further research is needed on its implementation in hospital and other health sciences libraries. AR and VR are already being implemented, and in some cases required, at the research and educational level globally, this is only expected to grow as the technology becomes more affordable and diverse applications are made available.