Introduction: Since the beginning of 1998, the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) have been carrying out training for medical/health librarians around the UK. A need for training had been identified earlier and a training programme was developed to help improve knowledge about and increase use of the Cochrane Library as a resource in UK medical libraries.
Objectives:
Methods: A questionnaire was handed out at the beginning of training sessions with the aim of gathering information on current usage and knowledge of the Cochrane Library and to find out how often librarians were teaching end users about the Cochrane Library. Trainees were also asked if they would be willing to fill in a further questionnaire at a later date and 224 out of the 415 librarians trained in 1998, have agreed to do so. We will report from an analysis of the before and after questionnaires, whether usage and knowledge of the Cochrane Library has grown amongst librarians in the UK, and assess how much librarians are educating users in the wider UK health community who are not involved with the Cochrane Collaboration at present. We will investigate the implications of the questionnaires for future training programmes in the UK and elsewhere.
Results:
Discussion: