A Scoping Review on Librarian and Information Professionals’ Contributions to Health Literacy to Inform Future Practice

Objectives: Library involvement in and leadership of health literacy-related training, research, and interdisciplinary projects continues to increase, highlighting health literacy’s growing importance to the profession. Three health librarians conducted a scoping review to understand the scope and depth of librarian involvement in health literacy. During the review process, the team learned important lessons about the unique challenges related to defining terms, establishing inclusion and exclusion criteria, and extracting data from a heterogeneous set of social science scholarship. Join this presentation to learn and discuss issues regarding developing and conducting a scoping review that are not addressed in most training materials.

Methods: In this presentation, the co-authors will discuss their process for developing and conducting the scoping review. After developing a protocol, searching the existing literature in a variety of relevant databases using librarian-created search strategies, and exporting the results into appropriate management software, the co-authors conducted the title/abstract and full-text screening process. The co-authors reflect on each stage of the process, including unforeseen challenges in the full-text review process, to the development of a data extraction tool appropriate for activity-based social science work. The co-authors also discuss their varying levels of experience in conducting evidence synthesis projects and how this impacted the process.

Results: Reflections and key takeaways from the process will be discussed, along with key numbers and decision aids created for the project. After title/abstract screening, the project team developed a more refined set of inclusion criteria based on findings from the initial results. The team also developed a data extraction instrument after failing to find adequate examples in the literature. Preliminary perceptions of trends from the initial review stages will also be discussed.

Conclusions: Once complete, the review’s results will inform conclusions on the current state of health literacy work in librarianship and future areas for collaboration, projects, and research. However, librarian involvement in comprehensive reviews from start to finish have proven to be a valuable and informative experience that can give librarians a unique perspective on the challenges their patrons face in the mysterious silence that occurs after they deliver search results, and can inform how librarians instruct patrons on comprehensive review methodology going forward.