A Scoping Review of Health Sciences Librarianship Research in the Philippines

Abstract

Health sciences librarianship is a specialization focusing on medical, clinical and scientific data in support of healthcare functions, including clinical decision making, medical research, and medical education. Being tied to a scientific field, health sciences librarianship handles rapidly changing information and information needs, and this presents a challenge for the services offered by the profession, as well as an opportunity to discuss theoretical and professional ideas in research forums. 

In the Philippines, there are a number of avenues through which health sciences librarianship research can be produced and disseminated. Despite the presence of these avenues, there has been no in-depth review of the types and directions of health sciences librarianship research in the country. This study aims establish the current coverage of research about health sciences librarianship in the Philippines. This is done via a scoping review.

The findings indicate that there has been an uptick in the number of health sciences librarianship research in the country in the past two decades, though many of these studies are unpublished theses. Descriptive studies via surveys remain as the go to methodology of choice, being practical, easy to execute, and extracting data relevant to practitioners of health sciences librarianship. Subject areas of interest are very practical, with health sciences education, library materials/collections, user studies and the status of the profession as the top subjects of research. Despite this, there is new ground broken in terms of novel topics, and more diverse methodologies are being applied to research in the country.