Editorial

Keeping Evidence Alive

Alison Brettle

Editor-in-Chief

Reader in Evidence Based Practice

School of Nursing, Midwifery, Social Work and Social Sciences

University of Salford, UK

2014 Brettle. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

Welcome to the December 9(4) issue of EBLIP, our last issue for 2014. Our first issue of the year began by describing change in the journal editorial team and this last issue of the year will do the same. I would like to say goodbye and thank you to our intern Archana Deshmukh, who has graduated from her MA and has taken up a post of Research Officer at the University of Brighton, UK. Archana was a great asset to the team, and I wish her well in her new post. Our new intern, Melissa Griffiths, is another UK librarian and also an LIS student at the University of Aberystwyth, UK, and has already contributed with her work toward the production of this issue. I would also like to thank and say goodbye to our copyeditor Molly Des Jardin and welcome on board two new copyeditors, Julie Evener and Heather Healy.

Finally, at the end of a 3-year term of office, I am stepping down as Editor-in-Chief. I’ve been involved with the journal since its inception 9 years ago, and although I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my role as Editor-in-Chief, I think it is time to take a step back and enable another member of the team to take the journal forward into the next decade. I’m immensely proud of what the journal has achieved. As a bottom-up, practitioner focused journal, we have a good user base, along with a strong editorial team made up of practitioner researchers supported by a large team of peer reviewers. We are a zero budget publication that relies solely on volunteer professionals, and despite this, the journal has continued to grow year over year (measured by the numbers of users registered and article downloads). Our focus continues to extend across library sectors from health to academic, to school and public libraries, and we incorporate evidence in various forms.

In my first editorial (Brettle, 2012) I reflected on my own professional journey with EBLIP that began by examining and researching my own practice before I realized EBLIP as a concept even existed. Although I will retain a link and role within the editorial team, I’m looking forward to having more time to undertake research and encourage others to question and evaluate their own practice. I also noted that it had been questioned whether EBLIP had a future (Booth, 2011). I’m relieved that in the intervening years EBLIP continued and I see no signs of it going away. I believe the EBLIP journal is a crucial part in fostering debate within the EBLIP movement as well as ensuring that library practitioners are able to easily access evidence that is relevant to their practice. I look forward to seeing this journal continue to flourish under the new Editor-in-Chief, Dr Lorie Kloda, and I wish Lorie well in the role. Lorie is well equipped to take over as she has previously held Associate Editor roles, initially for Evidence Summaries and more recently for Articles.

“No librarians will die” is a phrase we often use within our editorial team, so we don’t always worry about achieving deadlines exactly on time. Within healthcare, where the evidence based movement began, if evidence isn’t acted upon, at best resources will be wasted, but at worst patients will die. Although “no librarians will die” if we don’t implement EBLIP in our practice, we do need to ensure that our services are healthy by being efficient and provide what our stakeholders need and value. So it is important that we continue to ask questions, to find evidence and implement it in our practice – thus keeping evidence based practice alive. I look forward to watching this happen within the EBLIP journal over the years to come.

References

Booth, A. (2011). Is there a future for evidence based library and information practice? Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 6(4), 22-27. Retrieved from http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/

Brettle, A. (2012). Looking Forwards and looking back. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 7(1), 1-3. Retrieved from http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/