Putting Evidence Based Practice to work

At Internet Librarian this week - these are my notes from the first half of the Evidence Based Practice session - really enjoyed this one!

Putting evidence based practice to work

Amanda Hollister

Frank Cervone



Usability testing - Northwestern U

Problem of website design

Not large number of people trained in Human Computer Interaction

Have to learn in order to understand

People tend to feel like sites are" done" instead of constantly adjusting and reevaluating

Constantly evolving websites - to meet customer needs

Andrew Booth - U of Sheffield

quote from article.

heirarchy in how looked at


Data provides evidence, not anecdotal stories or common sense
Evaluation constantly.

How differentrom what happens? people making decisions now obn beliefs, not data

Evaluation after the fact is too late.

Comes from medicine - lots of writing from med school libraries

Study, compare results and compare results.

Evidence based practice process reminds me of the info life cycle - never ends - not daily, but consistently

SPICE -

Setting - where being used? What context

Population - who are users

, Intervention, - what is being done to/for?



COmparison, - what are alternatives?

Evaluation - what was result?

Needs to be much more rigorous

Look at the current evidence - focus groups & surveys are lower level. How could test at higher level?

Assume that title search is correct - example - but also looked at # and details of failed searches

Required reading list -

Req training in usabiltiy

participate in whole process

these three things teach people whole process.

Then, go back and compare new stats to old stats - have the changes worked. These stats are hard data, quantitative, not qualitative.

Also helps with justifying new tools or processes.

Lets prove that we are making things better - get better comments and feedback.

Still probs: jargon, users understand why would use library website.

Anecdotal evidence can give idea of what might need to be reviewed, but is not necessarily representative.


Ok, laptop dying now - switching to paper for notes


Will share reading list - assistant u librarian for infor technology - Frank Cervone.