Library Services for Electronic Lab Notebooks

University of Pittsburgh librarians at the Health Sciences Library System and the University Library System conducted an 18-question online survey to learn what roles other academic and health sciences libraries are playing at their institutions in providing services and support to their users regarding electronic lab notebooks (ELNs).

The survey was administered via Qualtrics. Questions included self-identification of being a health sciences library, whether their university offers an enterprise ELN license, if so which one and when did they start offering it, involvement in the selection process, types of services provided, service utilization, library staff involvement and workload, and whether other units at the university provide support. Questions were a mix of multiple choice and free text. Survey logic was used so depending on their answers respondents did not see all questions.

Participants were recruited from September 7, 2017 through October 6, 2017. An email message and reminder were targeted to numerous library listservs requesting participation from ONLY academic libraries, including those in the health sciences. The email also stated "The information gathered will be used in developing our service model, and we also expect to incorporate it into one or more presentations or articles for publication. Although we ask for information identifying your library/institution, it will only be used for data analysis purposes. No library/institution will be identified publicly or linked to any particular response." We therefore removed any identifying responses from the data response spreadsheet posted here. Q1 and Q9 were removed, and identifying information within Q10, Q13, and Q18 was redacted.

The CSV file contains de-identifed survey responses (indicated as #####). We did not include incomplete data (surveys with the majority of questions unanswered) and those responses that did not meet inclusion criteria of an academic/medical library. Also included is a PDF of the survey questions.

This data was described here: Iwema, C.L. and Ratajeski, M.A. (2018, May). Creating New Research Services: Library Support for Electronic Lab Notebooks. Paper presented at Medical Library Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA.