Overcoming Barriers to Information Retrieval Through Electronic Contact Cards: Experiences from a Health Sciences Library During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in our state, all in-person instruction, elective procedures, and non-essential research at the university were suspended. Essential research staff at the Division of Infectious Diseases (ID) were spread across various buildings and shift schedules to maximize social distancing. This dramatic reorganization brought various communication difficulties, including inconsistent interactions with librarian and an uncertainty of contact methods, which compounded an existing hesitancy to request research assistance

Description: We observed that hesitancy to request librarian assistance was characterized by a pattern of constructed formality and a self-reported wish not to “bother” librarians. ID staff had repeatedly contacted their librarian through a highly interpersonal medium (typically a hallway conversation) to request permission to make contact through a less intimate medium, such as telephone or email. To rectify the problem of redundant layers of formal introduction, we designed flyers to be posted in all workspaces including QR codes to standardize and simply researcher–librarian communication. Instead of providing contact details corresponding to multiple methods of communication, ID staff were directed to simply scan the code with their personal mobile device. An automated email would immediately be generated, addressed to the clinical librarian. The librarian would then proceed to initiate contact with the researcher and identify their information retrieval needs.

Conclusion: With the implementation of the QR code interface, information retrieval requests substantially increased among ID research associates. By standardizing requests for assistance to a single user input, the task of initiating contact was successfully transferred to the librarian, enabling them to proactively offer specific information retrieval services without depending on the initiative of the researcher. The accessibility of library resources was thereby improved, reducing library anxiety among the researchers and increasing the efficiency and output of the Division's COVID-19 research and evidence-based patient care