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Catherine Ebenezer 
Royal College of Midwives
Biography
Catherine
Ebenezer qualified as a librarian in 1993 after previous work in
the book trade and a notably unsuccessful spell as a chaplaincy
student in an American psychiatric hospital. She has managed
health libraries since then, initially within the NHS at the South
London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and since 2003 at the Royal College
of Midwives. Her professional interests include web content
and usability, electronic journals, library system technologies,
and clinician information use.
Abstract
Roles 'beyond the
library' in independent health libraries
CHILL
is a hugely diverse organisation; its constituent libraries range
from major national collections to small specialist services supporting
the needs of professional organisations and charities. Many of us
find that the services we provide to our parent organisations in
our endeavours to 'add value' take us well beyond the traditional
confines of a library and information service. They typically involve
other information-related functions, such as: · web site
and intranet management, including web strategy formulation, content
and metadata creation, and search engine optimisation · involvement
with organisational IT · running information services which
support consumer health helplines, or on topics as diverse as general
practice, drug treatment services, or children's play · maintenance
of specialist thesauri and taxonomies · knowledge management
initiatives such as the building of an ' organisational memory'
· formulation of copyright policies, and provision of copyright
guidance and advice · support for publication processes,
including generation of ISBNs, establishing citation and style guidelines,
copy-editing of publications, advising on marketing and distribution,
setting up e-commerce applications · acting as curator to
historical material, from incunabula to photo archives to portraits.
What issues does this raise? Are we adding value to the library
and information profession, or adding value to our organisations
at the expense of professional focus?
This page was last updated on:
16 May, 2006
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