Health Reference Support for Librarians During COVID-19 Era
3-Week Asynchronous ALA Course

Course Purpose

Responding helpfully and ethically to health and medical reference questions during an ongoing public health emergency requires reference staff to refine both their interviewing skills and resource awareness.  It recognizes that many participants will be coming to it—and to health reference practice—without benefit of their usual workplace’s institutional infrastructure on hand, including ready access to community health partners. This three-week course provides guidance for those charged with delivering such library reference support even if they cannot perform their professional work inside a brick and mortar building with a print collection.

Course Description

Participants will read, view, and listen to guidance materials; participate in online discussion forums; and attend one online webinar. This course is intended to deliver just in time learning. Materials shared in the course have been developed and kept up to date across the past several years by professional reference staff in both public and academic (including medical) libraries.  It is expected that participants in the course have some experience with delivering general reference services using traditional methods within their communities and that such services have been or soon will be disrupted by public health emergency (in this case COVID-19 and commensurate issues including restrictions on access to public buildings).

Learning Outcomes

Participants will

• become familiar with how standard reference interviewing techniques apply to health and medical questions
• gain a clear understanding of how to use free, high quality health and medical resources available to both them and clients online
• recognize best practices for responding equitably to health information needs from diverse demographic groups ranging in traditional literacy and in technology comfort
• review resource evaluation strategies to apply them appropriately to reports of emerging medical and public health news

Francisca Goldsmith has worked in public and academic libraries across North America for more than 25 years before becoming a full-time library staff development consultant and instructor. Recently, her focus has been on supporting public library staff and administrators in responding to community needs for access to healthcare information and expanding librarian and educator awareness of multi-modal literacy needs in both youth and adult communities. Her library experience and consulting includes frontline reference work, collection management, branch services management, and teen services development and advocacy. She is the author of The Readers' Advisory Guide to Graphic Novels, Second Edition (ALA Editions, 2017).