Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2012, 7.1

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

Editorial

Looking Forwards and Looking Back

Alison Brettle
Editor-in-Chief
Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Salford
Salford, United Kingdom
Email: a.brettle@salford.ac.uk

2012 Brettle. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

Welcome to the seventh volume of Evidence
Based Library and Information Practice. This is
my first issue in my new role of Editor-in-
Chief, and I’m honoured and delighted to take
over the position. As many of you may know,
I’ve been involved with the journal almost
since its inception, primarily as Associate
Editor (Articles). During that time, I’ve
sincerely enjoyed working with the supportive
EBLIP team, as well as many authors
throughout the world, and I’m looking
forward to continuing that work in my new
role.

Spring is traditionally a time of new growth
and change, and the EBLIP journal is no
different. In the last issue, Denise
Koufogiannakis reflected on how the journal
had grown and developed during its first 6
years, and I look forward to contributing to its
continued success. There have been a number
of changes in the editorial team. I welcome
Wayne Jones from Carleton University,
Canada, who has taken over as Associate
Editor (Articles) and brings a wealth of
editorial experience. Heather Pretty has taken
over as lead copyeditor and is joining our

editorial meetings to help ensure the continued
quality and consistency of the journal. As part
of quality assurance and development, the
editorial team is examining and revising our
journal guidelines, so look for those in
forthcoming months. Our former Editor-in-
Chief, Denise Koufogiannakis, is developing a
new role as Associate Editor (Reviews). As a
keen advocate of reviews for providing
evidence, developing skills for research and
evidence based practice, and documenting and
establishing an evidence base for our
profession, I’m looking forward to the first
review which is likely to be published in the
next issue. Too much change can be disruptive,
so I’m pleased that both Lorie Kloda and
Jonathan Eldredge are maintaining their
positions as Associate Editors for Evidence
Summaries and Classics, respectively.

When starting something new, it is often
useful to look back (to build on experience or
make sure we don’t make the same mistakes!).
When I looked back on my own evidence
based library and information practice journey,
I realized it began in the mid 1990’s, certainly
before I was even aware that the phrase had

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Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2012, 7.1

been coined. I’ve never worked in a library,
and my first professional post was as an
information specialist within a research unit
that supported evidence based health care. I
knew little about research and even less about
evidence based practice, I clung to the hope
that I knew something about being an
information professional! A long time
academic, my manager championed library
and information professionals believing they
had a key role to play in the evidence based
practice movement – whether by finding
information, developing information products,
or helping others to find information for
practice. Furthermore, he encouraged me to
examine my own practice, and when there
were no answers to some of the problems we
came across, to research, evaluate, and write
about it. This encouragement resulted in my
first forays into being an evidence based
library and information practitioner (Brettle,
Long, Grant, & Greenhalgh, 1998; Brettle &
Long, 2001). I challenge you to do the same;
you never know where it may lead.

Much of the debate about Evidence Based
Library and Information Practice has been
about its name (e.g., Booth, 2003), its definition
(e.g., Booth, 2003), the evidence (e.g., Crumley
and Koufogiannakis, 2003 and Eldredge, 2004),
and most recently, whether it has a future or
whether we should all retire (Booth, 2011). For
me, EBLIP is not about the name; it is about
what we do, how we behave, and how the
library and information profession can have a
continued future. (And in case you’re
wondering, I’m not about to retire). Our
professional roles are all about evidence (in its
various forms). The contexts in which we work
are changing, but as a profession we have
skills that make us good at dealing with
research, information, knowledge, or evidence
(for example, organizing, writing, or
searching). It therefore makes sense that we
build evidence based approaches into our
working lives. We can use these approaches to
transfer our knowledge to different contexts
and demonstrate our value and worth to
employers. This may take various forms –
critically reading a paper to get new ideas,
seeking out like minded colleagues to discuss
their approach to a problem, evaluating a

service or testing alternative approaches so
that we work in the most effective and efficient
way, and so on.

The purpose of the journal is to “provide a
forum for librarians and other information
professionals to discover research that may
contribute to decision making in professional
practice.” It does this in a number of ways
which I hope encourage you, our readers, to
incorporate evidence based approaches into
your working lives. Evidence summaries seek
to provide practitioners with a user friendly
overview of research that they can use in their
decision making, articles focus on generating
EBLIP related research, the Using Evidence in
Practice section focuses on the practical use of
evidence, and finally, the commentaries
provide a forum for debate. Over the past 6
years I have watched and contributed to the
journal’s development and seen its impact on
professional practice. I look forward to
contributing to its future and hope that you
will continue to give it your support.

References

Booth, A. (2003). Bridging the research-

practice gap? The role of evidence
based librarianship. New Review of
Information & Library Research, 9(1), 3-
23. doi:10.1080/13614550410001687909

Booth, A. (2011) Is there a future for evidence

based library and information
practice? Evidence Based Library and
Information Practice, 6(4), 22-27.

Brettle, A. J., & Long, A. F. (2001). Comparison

of bibliographic databases for
information on the rehabilitation of
people with severe mental illness.
Bulletin of the Medical Library
Association, 89(4), 353-362.

Brettle, A. J., Long, A. F., Grant, M. J., &

Greenhalgh, J. (1998). Searching for
information on outcomes: do you need
to be comprehensive? Quality in Health
Care, 7(3), 163-167.

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2012, 7.1

Crumley, E., & Koufogiannakis, D. (2002).
Developing evidence-based
librarianship: practical steps for
implementation. Health Information &
Libraries Journal, 19(2), 61.
doi:10.1046/j.1471-1842.2002.00372.x

Eldredge, J. D. (2004). Inventory of research

methods for librarianship and
informatics. Journal of the Medical
Library Association, 92(1), 83-90.

/ Evidence Based Library and Information Practice