Supporting Cook’s scientific research

Over the last few years, Melissa Price has needed to conduct many literature searches to support the projects and marketing claims she has worked on as a manager for Clinical Programs Data Communications. In these situations, she has reached out to the Cook Medical Library team.

“While I can do a literature search on my own, I am certainly not an expert on the multiple database systems the library team has at their disposal,” Melissa said.

This team, based at the Cook Research Incorporated (CRI) facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, offers guidance on search strategies, provides training on databases and copyright, and can acquire clinical literature to support projects at Cook globally. They have been assisting in scientific research to support product research and development in some capacity since 2008 under the umbrella of Scientific Communications, which is led by Director Liz Krause. The team consists of Manager Jen Douthit (MLS), Senior Corporate Librarian Jane Matthews (MLS), and Corporate Librarian Kyle Mossman (MLS), as well as Regulatory Affairs Coordinator Andi Weller.

“I can send information on the disease, the population, and the treatment(s), and the team goes to work to search through multiple data sources to compile literature for me. This not only saves time on my end but allows me to have a concise list of sources, authors, and publications. I have had some great success on projects because of their services,” Melissa said.

The task of forming the library was originally spearheaded by Lorraine Van Meter. Lorraine retired from Cook in 2018 and passed away in July 2022 after a battle with cancer. During her time with Cook, Lorraine worked in Regulatory, Clinical, and Quality at CRI (it was known at the time as Med Institute). She noticed that employees in Regulatory were using specific articles to support their submissions and that people in Research & Development (R&D) were also using the same literature, causing duplications and extra money to be spent. So, she began coordinating subscriptions and employee access to this literature.

“Lorraine single-handedly started the library, and with the help and support of Liz and some others at Cook, it grew into what we know it as today,” Jen said.

The Cook Medical Library archive has now grown to include almost 80,000 items, including articles, abstracts, conference proceedings, and physical and electronic copies of books.

Literature access

One of the main tasks of the library team is to manage access to literature for Cook employees. In addition to freely available biomedical literature databases like PubMed, they provide access to subscription databases that employees can use to help augment their searches. These include Scopus, Embase, ScienceDirect and Springer.

Jen advises employees to contact the team if they are trying to access an article that sits behind a paywall. In some cases, it can be cheaper for the team to get an article as they have librarian access and can also eliminate any duplication of efforts. The team then stores the article long term to be used by other employees and provides copyright guidance.

The team also provides literature consultations. For this service, employees can send research questions to the team and they will assist in developing search strategies and narrow down a few articles for the requestor to review They will even work to help the searcher refine their topic.

“For example, one question we got recently was the anatomical range of angles between the common iliac from the internal iliac arteries,” Jane said. “So of course librarians aren’t subject matter experts, we aren’t engineers, we aren’t scientists, but we are good at finding the topics in the databases. A lot of our support is just answering, ‘I need to find this information; how should I get started?’”

“Every time I make a request, even for some relatively obscure regional one, like the Australia or New Zealand Gastrointestinal specialty journal article on Hemospray for diverticular bleeding, the library team is able to secure it rapidly,” said David Wagner, global medical science liaison for the MedSurg Division.

Trainings

The library team provides a variety of levels of training on the resources they offer, ranging from introductory topics, such as a general overview of the library services and searches, to more intermediate approaches to searching the databases. Over time, they have tried to develop their trainings around the requests that they have received for support. They offer these training sessions monthly via Outlook invitations as well as through the Cook Learn platform and on SharePoint.

“We do still have people saying, ‘Oh there’s a library?’” Jane said. “So we’re always excited to do outreach and remind employees that help is available, and I think offering those regular trainings is a good way to let them know that we are here.”

They also have trainings available on Cook Learn. These resources include an overview of the library as well as a three-part series on searching and a course on copyright.

“We get reports on the people who have taken them, and I think they’re well received,” Kyle said.

SharePoint

With Cook’s transition to SharePoint, the team was able to develop a homepage for the Cook Medical Library. The site provides general information on how to access the databases, as well as guides and tutorials for using them. Their SharePoint also provides information on how to request a specific article, submit an article to the archive, information on copyright, and the team’s contact information and their training calendar.

Copyright

The last main area that the team touches on is copyright. According to Jen, Cook has a business license with the Copyright Clearance Center that allows them to share articles from most journals in a compliant manner amongst all Cook employees.

“So we can share between the US and say Denmark or Japan, and they can share amongst each other at the Cook locations,” Jen said.

When the team sends an article to a requestor, they provide them with the copyright information. If it’s covered by the copyright agreements, they let them know that they can share it within Cook.

“Our copyright agreements don’t cover every journal so sometimes we have to tell people that we purchased the article only for them. If you need to share an article, let us know and we’ll purchase additional copies,” Jen said. “We are trying to make us as compliant as we can be.”

Looking forward

The Cook Medical Library has grown significantly since its inception. Looking forward, to the next five or 10 years, Jen hopes that the library and her team will become a known entity around the company. This means accommodating the type of training that these teams prefer. For example, holding trainings through a number of platforms, such as in-person, Cook Learn, or Webex.

“If there is something that they’re looking for that we don’t have, then they can request it and we can look at those possibilities,” Jen said.

Liz added that the library is always worth revisiting because it is ever-evolving and always adding new materials. She also hopes that they will be able to expand access to literature in the future.

“The literature industry itself is changing and the publishing industry is changing,” Liz said. “So as the publishing industry continues to change, the library has to change with it and figure out how to continue to serve Cook in the best way that it can.”

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