Frances Norton 

Biography

Frances Norton is currently Head of the Wellcome Library, a post to which she was appointed in July 2004. The Wellcome Library is one of the world's finest collections for the study of the history of medicine and was awarded MLA designation in 2005. Management of this Library is a natural progression in a career which has, in the main, been centred around medical libraries. Born and educated in New Zealand, Frances moved to the UK in 1977. Beginning at Leeds Metropolitan University, as Psychology Librarian, she moved into the NHS, running a number of hospital libraries over a period of ten years. In 1997 she joined the University of Leeds, and was Medical Librarian there until 2003, before taking up a senior management position in 2003 to lead and develop the Library's public services as a whole. Frances interests are in staff management and managing change, combined with a strong interest in all aspects of biomedical information and in the impact of medicine on culture – from its earliest history to its most recent digital manifestations. Most recently, advocacy for open access publishing in scientific literature has been a key, as has the development of a sustainable archive of historically important websites, systems for the ingestion of the born-digital archives of eminent medics and digitisation of important history of medicine journals. Current work is focussed around the development of appropriate Creative Commons licences for digital images. Running alongside the digital agenda, Frances is scoping new areas of content for the Library, working with the 67 strong staff to redefine working practice and developing new services prior to the move of the Library in 2007 to a refurbished building which will put the Library at the centre of a major new public engagement venue for London.

Abstract

Changing audiences for health information - where next?

Health libraries have found themselves continually adapting to new audiences - from medical practitioners to nurses and allied health professionals, to students, academics, and latterly to patients and patient advocacy groups. For some librarians there is the additional dimension of reaching out to the wider public - that section of the population interested in the ethical issues
surrounding health. What are the implications for staff roles, services and collections when libraries seek to engage with new types of customers?

This page was last updated on: 27 June, 2006