Librarian Collaboration in Guideline Development

Background: This paper describes the experience of three librarians from different institutions working together on a national guideline, the benefits of that collaboration, a suggested approach, and the questions that should be asked beforehand to ensure the experience is efficient and the guideline is of the highest quality.

Description: Participating in guidelines is challenging because of the need to balance best practices, time constraints, and researchers' needs. Most clinical guidelines include faculty authors from multiple institutions. When a librarian is invited to join a guideline development team, often times the librarian's role is poorly defined. Before agreeing to participate in a national guideline, librarians should consider authorship versus acknowledgment, time commitment, number, and complexity of clinical questions, project management, research team support, team experience with guideline development, and cross-institutional librarian collaboration.

Conclusion: Collaborating with librarians from other institutions has many benefits: the burden of completing search strategies is shared; librarian partners can serve as a sounding board for problem-solving; opportunities are provided for librarians to learn new skills, databases, and technology not subscribed to by their own institutions; and peer review improves the quality of the searches, thus ensuring the highest quality guidelines. Lastly, involving more librarians strengthens relationships between librarians and faculty from their own institutions which could lead to other opportunities.