In approximately two weeks’ time, I will be starting my first real librarian job. As in, the word “librarian” is in the title.  I will be the Health Sciences Outreach Librarian at a local college campus, a grant-funded position that I will be the first to hold at this particular institution. That is very exciting, since I will have a lot of freedom in how I accomplish my work. And it is also very frightening, because I will have no existing framework to guide me.

So to fill that void, I have turned to the wider academic library world. I have explored the library webpages of other institutions, I have perused the literature for anything concerning outreach, I have studied the resources available on the NN/LM Evaluation Office webpage. I have been pleasantly surprised (and not a little relieved) to find so much quality information about library outreach in the health sciences. Here is what impressed me the most:

• The Health Sciences Library at the University of Maryland offers an IRB Research Consent Form Review service. Researchers can submit their consent forms to the library via an online form, and receive edits for clarity and readability.
• An article from the JMLA titled “Inside outreach: a challenge for health sciences librarians” (Fama et al., 2005). It describes the results of a survey distributed to medical and health sciences libraries to determine trends in outreach. According to the survey, the biggest obstacles to successful outreach are lack of staff and failure to meet customer need; the biggest advantages are strong customer need and networking.
•  The evaluation guides from the NEO provide excellent information about how to plan, engage, and evaluate a successful outreach project. The “Inputs/Activities/Outputs” model makes planning outreach seem almost easy!

What health sciences outreach resources have other librarians found useful?