Research engagement in health librarianship: Outcomes of a focus group

• Research engagement amongst UK health librarians is impeded by a number of identified barriers.
• Five key priorities for research engagement in UK health librarianship have been identified.
• Research is perceived by health librarians mainly within professional and consumer contexts.
• Barriers to research engagement are mainly contextualised in profession focussed research.
• Priorities to research engagement are mainly contextualised in research by health professionals.

It is widely recognised that there is a lack of research engagement in librarianship. Anecdotal and editorial based observations express concerns regarding this situation but there is a lack of research exploring it. The research which does exist has been conducted at a generic level with little relevance to specific disciplines of librarianship therefore weakening its impact and applicability at discipline level. To date, there have been no studies that examine issues of research engagement exclusively within the context of UK health librarianship. This study reports on the findings of a focus group conducted as part of a larger study which attempted to redress this current gap in the evidence base. The focus group aimed specifically to gain consensus on the top five key barriers and top five key priorities for research engagement in the UK health librarianship. The main findings suggest that barriers to research engagement are mainly contextualised within research addressing key matters for the profession of health librarianship, whilst priorities are mainly contextualised within the role health librarians have in supporting the research of the health professionals to whom they provide library services. Outcomes of the focus group provide early empirical evidence to confirm that whilst there is considerable goodwill towards research and the development of the evidence base in health librarianship, there are existing challenges between working for the interests of both the library service user and development of the evidence base in healthcare, and the evidence based progression of the health librarianship profession.