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Evidence-based librarianship. Su Cleyle
Introduction
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered (John Ruskin).
How many times in a working day do you question the value of established library practice? What questions do you and your colleagues ask when contemplating the introduction of some new technology or some innovative service? It is true that, on occasions, lack of time or other logistic constraints will conspire to cause what we might label an "evaluation bypass". On such occasions we may continue to perform some task or action even though we are not truly convinced of its efficacy or we may move to uncritical adoption of a new technology or procedure. Hopefully such instances are the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless we must acknowledge that it does take both time and effort to "start stopping" or to "stop starting" ([26] Gray, 1997). Thus it becomes critical that all information professionals become efficient at identifying, formulating and addressing relevant questions from their own practice.
Within other domains of evidence-based practice, most notably evidence-based healthcare, a considerable knowledge base has been built up around the formulation of questions. We know, for example, that on average physicians ask two questions for every three patients seen ([6] Booth, 2005). We know too that a large percentage of these questions (30-60 per cent) will go unanswered - in some cases because the one asking does not believe that the answer is to be found ([6] Booth, 2005). Frequently questions will be answered with reference to colleagues or from outdated textbooks ([6] Booth, 2005). It would be reassuring to believe that, as a profession, our knowledge of the research literature in librarianship is such that we can correctly anticipate whether the answers to our questions from day-to-day practice do exist. The truth is that very few of us have regular and intensive contact with our own evidence base. This situation is further aggravated by the fact that many of our activities lie within domains populated by other research literatures, for example management, education, marketing and computer science ([13] Crumley and Koufogiannakis, 2002).
Why ask questions?
Questioning the fundamentals of daily work practice is a defining characteristic of a professional. As Geroud remarked...