The Status of Libraries and Employment of Medical Librarians in Hospitals of Tehran City

The Status Employment of Medical Librarians in Hospital Libraries of Tehran City Nowadays, it is essential to employ medical and clinical librarians in hospital libraries, to provide the necessary information for healthcare professionals and to help them access evidence based information. Thus, in this study we investigated the occupational status of experts in the field of medical librarianship and information science in hospital libraries of Tehran city in 2013.
This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study, conducted on 152 hospitals in Tehran City. We used a questionnaire to collect the data. Descriptive statistics and SPSS version 18 was used to analyse the data.
Findings indicated that only 13 participants had a degree in the field of medical librarianship and information science, while 28 persons had a degree in librarianship and information science and other participants had a degree in other fields. The majority of participants (51.3 %) with non-related fields to librarianship had learned some librarianship skills in their own experience. Other participants had learned librarianship skills with other methods. Most participants were employed with hiring process followed by the recommendation of friends and relatives, respectively.
There is a lack of medical librarians in the hospital libraries of Tehran city. Thus, these libraries are not able to perform their professional duties that is meeting the information needs of healthcare professionals in hospitals. For the effective and proactive management of medical information resources, hospitals’ managers should try to overcome common hiring obstacles of medical librarians.