Using the ICIRN Essential Nursing Resources List to Evaluate Library Collections

Objective To evaluate libraries nursing collections for how their resources align with the Interagency Council on Information Resources in Nursing (ICIRN) Essential Nursing Resources list. Background The ICIRN has maintained a biennial list of nursing resources since 1967. This list includes both free and subscription-based books, databases, and websites. The Essential Nursing Resources 26th edition was released as online only for the first time in 2012. Methods To build a list of library websites with nursing collections, a random sample of over 200 nursing programs was created from 559 Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredited schools. Libraries’ collections were compared to free and subscription-based resources from the following categories: Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Consumer Health and Patient Education, Databases and Indexes, Drugs, and Evidence-Based Nursing. Resources included databases and government resources such as National Library of Medicine resources. Print resources were excluded. The results were recorded on an online survey tool called Qualtrics. Results The results section will include information on the colleges with accredited nursing programs such as the type of institution based on the Carnegie Classifications and the level of nursing degree. It will also indicate which versions of CINAHL and MEDLINE libraries use and resources not on the Essential Nursing Resources that were on the libraries’ websites. Conclusions This presentation is the first time the Essential Nursing Resources has been used as the basis for an evaluation study of libraries’ nursing collections.