LIBRARY NEWS - JUNE 2011
Library News
Library services review complete
As you may be aware, NHS Health Scotland’s library service has been through a review process over the past few months. The working group, which included the library services team, met on four occasions between November 2010 and February 2011 and the recommendations from this process were submitted to NHS Health Scotland’s Partnership Forum on 27th April. All of the recommendations were accepted and will be implemented during the current financial year, which will mean some major changes to the service as it stands.
The review underlined NHS Health Scotland’s commitment to library services but highlighted a need for a broader knowledge-based support service for practitioners in Scotland working in the field of health improvement and reducing health inequalities.
In order to facilitate this there will be a change of focus from the physical library and its resources, to the information/knowledge management skills of the librarians. We will therefore close the walk-in library service from 29th July, as the number of visitors has dwindled to a trickle in recent years, and move to an electronic model, whereby all of our services will continue to be fully available via email or telephone. We will also reduce the library’s physical collection of books and other materials to a core set of up-to-date health improvement and health inequalities resources. These developments will enable library staff to go out and meet with users and discuss their information support needs more easily.
Another key area that we are working on is aligning the work of the library service more closely with the work of NHS Health Scotland. We have always provided direct support to our internal users by providing literature searching and enquiry services as and when they are requested, but this year we have asked project leads to indicate a requirement for library services support as part of the business planning process. This is proving very successful and library services staff have been meeting with project leads to discuss the projects and how knowledge services support can provide added value to the project. The service will also be split between Edinburgh and Glasgow so that there is a dedicated librarian available for staff in both office bases.
Alongside these developments, there is also a national review of the role of the librarian in NHS Scotland taking place. We are fully involved in this process and hope to feed our own experiences of change into the review and the outcomes are also likely to impact upon the way our team operates in future.
If you have any queries in relation to the review process, then please contact Julia Green, Acting Library Services Manager, in the first instance, on 0131 536 5578 or juliagreen@nhs.net
Julia Green
Library Services Manager (Acting)