Levelling the playing field: The University of Queensland Rural Clinical School Library enabling participation in research in rural and remote medicine

Mrs Kaye Lasserre, University of Queensland, Rural Clinical School Library, Australia*
Mrs Margaret Lamb, University of Queensland, Rural Clinical School Library, Australia

A submission by The University of Queensland (UQ) Library to the Commonwealth Government in 2002 was successful in gaining ongoing funding to establish the Rural Clinical School (RCS) Library. The Library supports medical students on placement and their clinical teachers, mainly in Central and Southwest Queensland. It has enhanced access to information and related services in previously under-served rural and remote areas.

The UQ Library’s mission is to enrich world-class scholarship and plays a key role in building rural and remote research capacity. The 2008 evaluation of University Departments of Rural Health and the Rural Clinical Schools reported the positive influence of clinical schools on fostering a research culture and recommended this be further developed. The role of the Library as part of RCS infrastructure in facilitating engagement with local clinicians was highlighted. The 2009 Final Report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission recommended greater investment in rural health research. In this year’s A National Health and Hospitals Network for Australia’s Future, the Commonwealth expects strong engagement between local hospital networks and clinical schools and research centres to transfer knowledge to practice.

The Library supports these priorities by working in partnership with the academic community to provide convenient access to quality information. We customise our information services to meet individual needs, from novice to expert, and recognise the rural and remote medicine perspectives and its particular requirements. This paper will discuss the ways the UQ RCS Library enables participation in research in rural and remote medicine, in Queensland locations historically under-represented due to barriers such as isolation, lack of time or access to quality resources. Through the provision of research assistance, over 5000 health electronic journals, citation databases and the personal bibliographic software Endnote, the Library significantly changes the rural scholarly landscape and levels the research playing field.

Click the forward and back buttons (bottom right hand corner) on the powerpoint slide below to manually move through the slides.

Click the play button below to listen to the audio of the presentation.