REALISE-ing their potential?: Implementing local library projects to support evidence-based health care

Librarian involvement in Evidence-based Health Care provides many opportunities at a local level. Unfortunately, the potential for innovative projects to inform future developments is generally lost by a failure to 'pass the baton'--to identify lessons learnt and transferable principles. The 'Library Support for Evidence-based Health Care' Project, funded by the NHS Executive Northern and Yorkshire, resulted in the implementation of locally responsive packages of hardware and software in six of the Region's libraries. The opportunity to evaluate the collective experience of these sites, and to synthesize principles of good practice, was provided by a separately funded post-hoc evaluation, the Research Evaluation to Audit Library and Information Support for EBHC (REALISE). This paper reports on how this evaluation was conducted, documents the strengths and weaknesses of the Project itself, and attempts to provide a checklist for use in similar projects. The paper concludes by outlining the relevance of the findings to the introduction of planned organizational approaches to quality (clinical governance) and the development of local implementation strategies across the UK, required by the NHS Information Strategy, Information for Health.