#blogjune Day 10: The 5A’s (or 6A’s) EBLIP process (Koufogiannakis, 2013) is a guide that aims to structure thinking around the steps involved in evidence-based decision making, professional practice or service improvement.
(This Mumma’s had a hard day today. Self-care has consisted of a yoga class earlier this evening, take away for dinner and now a glass of vino while I post a couple of videos and transcripts. Hopefully, the Brisbane Broncos don’t lose another game and I can be in bed with my book soon 🙂 )
Transcript
G’day and welcome to this video series talking about all things evidence-based library & information practice. In this video I’m talking about the five A’s process and I’m going to refer to Koufogiannakis’ model that is in the textbook, ‘Being Evidence Based in Library and Information Practice’.
Here it is – highly recommend the read. Grab it from a library or invest in a copy for yourself or for your team. Alison Brettle and Denise Koufogiannakis goes into significantly more depth into the steps than I’m about to go through.
EBLIP’s 5 As process
So first of all we have ‘Articulate’ and that means that you learn and understand, and get a good understanding of what it is you’re trying to find out – the problem that you’re addressing, the question you are asking. And I’ll argue probably one of the most important steps of the process because it sets you up for the rest of the steps.
The second being ‘Assemble’ and this is when you assemble all the evidence from various sources and types. You then ‘Assess’ this evidence for reliability, validity and even the weighting that it should have on the decision that you’re making. You might need to go back to assemble if you don’t quite have enough or all the right evidence to make your decision. And then you ‘Agree’. So particularly in a team environment you will need to agree on a way forward, and then you ‘Adapt’. This means that once you’ve implemented that change, that improvement or that decision that you’ve made, that you then reflect upon its success – what worked, what hasn’t worked.
A sixth ‘A’?
Some might argue that there is a 6th ‘A’ or a ‘C’ communication. The ‘A’ being ‘Advocacy’. We can’t advance or improve as a profession if we don’t have contributions back to our professional body of knowledge. We need practitioners to share their learning and add this. Also our key stakeholders are, I’ll say, key to keeping that cycle going. Communicating what we’ve given our communities and how we serve them as libraries kick-starts the process all over again because you’re getting that feedback, that conversation happening.
The current model is an ideal, it’s a guide and it’s a good way to start structuring your evidence-based practice thinking or if you’re looking to develop a habit of a way of doing things in this way, for yourself as a professional and also for your team.
So five As, or the six As is the current EBLIP model and process. Until next time, cheers.
Questions?
If you have any questions at all about EBLIP, do get in touch. I’ll try to address them in this video series.
You can also view Day 10 (The 5 A’s process) video here.
Catch up on all the videos here.
References
Koufogiannakis, D., & Brettle, A. (eds.) (2016). Being evidence based in library and information practice. Facet Publishing: London. p 15.
