Journal of

Background: Nowadays, it is essential to employ medical and clinical librarians to provide the required information for healthcare professionals and enhance accessibility to evidence based information in hospital libraries. Thus, this study aimed at assessing the medical librarians' employment status in hospital libraries in Tehran city in 2013.

Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive and cross-sectional study. Study population considered from all 152 hospitals in Tehran city. Data collected using a questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS version 18 using descriptive statistics.

Results: only thirteen participants had medical librarianship and information science degree. While 28 persons graduated in librarianship and information science from universities affiliated to Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and others had degree in non relevant fields. The majority of participants (51.3 %) with non-related degree were educated empirically and others had learned librarianship skills with other methods. Most of participants were employed based on hiring official process and friends and relatives recommendation.

Conclusions: There is a real lack of medical librarians in the hospital libraries in Tehran city. Thus, these libraries are not able to perform their professional duties such preparing information and omitting healthcare professionals' needs in hospitals. It is necessary that hospitals’ managers attempt to hire medical librarians' and overcome employment barriers.