Providing Evidence about the Pandemic: Librarian Roles on a Rapid Response Team for COVID-19

Abstract

BACKGROUND: SARS-CoV-2 has led to a deluge of information. Health leaders/personnel need curated and synthesized information to aid their decision making regarding diagnosis, treatment, mitigation, reopening plans, etc. A collaboration involving the state department of health has been developed to respond to those needs. Several programs were created simultaneously, two of which depend on active librarian involvement. One focuses on rapid expert responses to questions from state leadership supported by annotated bibliographies. The other is a daily digest of emerging literature including reviews on patient care, law and ethics, communication, forecasting and surveillance, schools, and mitigation. DESCRIPTION: Librarians from several libraries at a university are responding to the need for synthesized high-quality information related to the pandemic. These librarians have expertise in the areas of evidence-based medicine, data management, public health, and law. From the beginning, librarians have been heavily involved in creating workflows related to project and data management. Project management included having a standard process for tracking questions, delivering information, and team development. Librarians developed the team through onboarding, defining roles, scheduling, consistent communication, and shared document templates. Librarians created data management processes such as citation management, readme files, file management/naming conventions, data backup, etc. Librarians encouraged adoption of creative commons license notices on public-facing work to make the information more accessible. Project assessment was built into workflows and includes tracking: questions, turn around time, updates, and return on investment. CONCLUSION: Since the inception of this program, librarians have answered over 108 questions and provided 18 updates to annotated bibliographies. The average turnaround time for creating annotated bibliographies is 16 hours with a range of 2-48 hours. In addition, librarians have provided searches to support over 900 blog posts for WISE Indiana. While the pandemic has been stressful, this project provided us with an outlet to support our state. In addition, this project has led to: increased visibility for librarians, salary savings for the library, and recognition for our contributions that led to the receipt of an Award for Excellence in Public Health from Dr. Kristina Box​, the State Health Commissioner for Indiana.