The Evidence Is In—Singing Works!

Posted by Ann Glusker on June 29th, 2017 Posted in: News From NNLM PNR

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You’ve probably heard of evidence-based medicine, but have you ever encountered evidence-based library and information practice?  It’s a movement that encourages librarians and information professionals to use research evidence in their daily practice, just as health care providers do, and to conduct their own research in order to inform their practice.

Not only that, but there is an open access journal called (what else?) Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, there is a great new compilation of articles edited by two giants in the field, Denise Koufogiannakis and Alison Brettle, and there is an international conference that happens every two years.

So, about that conference—the 9^th iteration of the conference was held in Philadelphia last week, at Drexel University. EBLIP9 (http://eblip9.org/, #EBLIP9) featured pre-conference workshops, several excellent plenary speakers, a hard-hitting panel on fake news, and upwards of 80 paper presentations.  And, there were posters. And not only posters, but also a session attended by the entire conference called “Poster Madness”.  Each presenter had EXACTLY one minute to present their poster content, with creativity encouraged.

I was lucky enough to attend the conference and have a poster accepted, on health numeracy. But what to do for Poster Madness? Singing seemed like a good idea, so I sang my poster, “Health Numeracy” to the tune of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”. Video below!* Many people stopped by my poster to see who the singer was, and I managed to deliver the poster content as they marveled at my feat of bravery.

The evidence is in!  Singing impresses people and gets them to talk to you!  Could this be a new field of library and information practice??

*Disclaimer: My start is a little wobbly, due to having just gotten to Philadelphia from Seattle on a red eye flight a few hours before.  And if you want to see the lyrics (diction can be tough when you’re singing fast!), just click on the YouTube icon.