Consumer Health Information Provision in Rural Public Libraries: A Comparison of Two Library Systems

To better understand health information provision in the public library setting, two cooperative library systems that serve primarily rural populations in upstate New York were studied. The central library in one of those systems established a consumer health information center (CHIC) in 1999. In the other system, the central library does not have such a center. Visits were made to ten randomly selected libraries in each of the two systems (n = 20), and the query "Do vaccines cause autism?" was posed to library staff. Print resources were provided more often than online resources in both systems. Utilization of the CHIC as a health information resource was inconsistent among libraries. Follow-up phone interviews found none of the twenty libraries had reference policies. Reported practice matched actual practice 60 percent of the time in the system without the CHIC and 40 percent of the time in the system with the CHIC.