105 - Interprofessional Education: Developing Programming and Instructional Services for Our New Health Sciences Library

Background: Our academic research institution serves multiple health sciences schools and hospitals and is opening a second library location to provide opportunities for the interprofessional education of researchers, students, and healthcare practitioners. Prior to COVID-19, librarians developed instructional materials for their individual schools, which does not support the team-based learning necessary for cross-disciplinary collaboration. By using stakeholder feedback gathered from our new experiences with cooperative online learning environments during COVID, we will create library programming that can be integrated into interprofessional education to improve the accessibility of library resources and to foster collaboration between health professionals throughout their careers.

Description: There is growing demand for collaborative interdisciplinary health sciences education and research, and accordingly our medical library is opening a second location to expand this programming. Librarians used instructor and student feedback during the 2020-2021 academic years conducted online to develop better teaching methods by breaking long presentations into smaller chunks, standardizing materials to be applicable across schools, and recording instructional sessions for asynchronous learning. With our new library opening this year, we will incorporate these resources and programming into our interprofessional curriculum. Program success will facilitate collaboration between schools to support cross-specialty research; improve student outcomes in information literacy, scholarly publishing, and research; and help attract and retain instructors, researchers, and students. This programming will adapt to user needs and feedback as we establish our new presence and role as a hub for active and team-based learning.

Conclusion: As this is a new space with a programming approach distinct from our main library, our expected outcomes may evolve over time. We anticipate: the formation of interdisciplinary collaboration and the adoption of team-based learning within the health sciences; student and researcher engagement with our synchronous and asynchronous programming; an increased interest in inter-professional scholarly publishing and understanding of information literacy; and improved accessibility of library resources for students, faculty, and researchers. After our new library has established a baseline for instructional services and user engagement, we can develop metrics to determine our successes and shortcomings in each area. Using this data and our stakeholders' feedback, we will adapt our programming and goals according to their needs.