Cross-Discipline Research

In Jim Mille’s podcast on library staff recruiting, he mentions how law libraries are not hiring outside of our narrow specialty. His comment came back to me when I read an article “Assessing Health Literacy in Clinical Practice”(available through www.medscape.com; free registration). The article writes how poor literacy affects patients’ compliance with treatment; I could not help but think of my recent post on poor literacy of library users and the supporting comments of fellow bloggers. Our problems are not unique.

Evidently, the US Dept of Education assesses the literacy of the population (NCES 2006-483). We should be looking at that report and evaluating how its conclusions could affect court administration and library services, but I am not aware of anyone using it. I cannot think of a better way to demonstrate our willingness to participate in public debate.