CILIP | Bishop Memorial Lecture 1994

The Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group 1978-1992.

The Bishop Memorial Lecture 1994
by Anne Willis

Introduction
The starting point for the article in Health Libraries Review (1) out of which this lecture grew was the talk by Jenny Wade in her capacity as first chairman of the newly formed Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group to the inaugural meeting of the South West Sub Group in July 1980, in which she described the Group’s aims and activities.

This talk was never written up for publication, but Shane Godbolt had a typescript and at a time of probable further change for the Group she asked me if I would write an article on the Group to date, using Jenny’s framework and drawing on her record of the early years, and in this way acknowledging her contribution to the development and constitution of the Group and to the record of its progress, a contribution which was cut short by her untimely death in 1990 at the age of only 42 (2).

This I was very happy to do since although many colleagues worked hard to ensure the success of the new Group I felt that we owed a particular debt to Jenny for her abilities of clear thinking, good organisation and documentation. I consider that she was one of the Group’s most effective chairmen, and this at a particularly critical time.

Subsequently I was asked if I would give the Bishop Memorial Lecture for 1994 on the same broad topic, somewhat to my surprise, my understanding being that it normally took some aspect of medical history or bibliography as its theme, since W.J. Bishop was so distinguished in these fields.

As a medical librarian, however, he was also particularly interested in professional training and improvement in standards of practice and was instrumental in the formation of the Medical Section of the Library Association and so I would like to think that he would not find it inappropriate to be considering tonight the history and the role of its successor organisation, the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group.

Origins of Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group
The Medical Section was originally formed in 1947 with just 33 members as a sub-section of the University and Research Section, when a previous attempt to form an association of medical librarians had failed as there were insufficient potential members. It is hard to credit this situation now, when professionally qualified librarians work throughout the health sector and virtually every issue of the LA Record Vacancies Supplement carries one or more advertisements for posts in this field. It became a Section in its own right in 1949 when membership had reached 100.

The Hospital Libraries and Handicapped Readers Group was formed in 1962 with an initial membership of 130, although an organisation outside the Library Association, named the Guild of Hospital Librarians, had been in existence for many years before that.

It is recorded that William Bishop had had reservations about links with the Library Association, since it was seen by many as primarily a public library organisation, and there were undoubtedly echoes of this disquiet when a merger between the Hospital Libraries and Handicapped Readers Group and the Medical Section was proposed.

However, members of both groups had many professional attitudes in common. They were, for example, much concerned about education and standards of professional practice, as had been the early pioneering figures in both fields. William Bishop, for example, had given an experimental series of lectures on medical librarianship at the North Western Polytechnic in 1950 which led to the first special course being set up at the College in 1951. In addition, Sheila Moore, who had been an active member of the Library Association and the Guild of Hospital Librarians, though tragically she did not live to see the formation of the Hospital Libraries and Handicapped Readers Group, had actually helped to organise the first course on hospital librarianship at the North Western Polytechnic in 1959.

Members of both groups were also anxious to improve the resourcing of libraries in the National Health Service, and the recognition of the value of professionally qualified librarians, during a time of change. We tend to think of change as the watchword of recent years as it in the past nothing changed – but radical new structures has been implemented both in local government and in the NHS with more emphasis being placed on postgraduate medical education, and nurse training beginning to evolve into nursing education. In addition medical libraries were being established in non-teaching hospitals and qualified librarians were being employed in the NHS in increasing numbers so that medical librarianship was no longer mainly the preserve of those working in universities or the libraries of the Royal Colleges and medical societies.

In many areas outside the teaching centres public libraries had taken the initiative where often the NHS was slow to act and had offered joint arrangements for administering patient and medical libraries. Developments were also taking place in schools of nursing and libraries were being set us, some with librarians. Gradually also the needs of other groups of health care professionals came to be recognised, so that some hospital medical libraries became multidisciplinary facilities.

There was pressure the Medical Section to extend its field of interest, and at the same time the Hospital Libraries Group had many members whose sphere of operation went beyond services to patients. Many people. like me, belonged to both Groups yet were unlikely to be able to attend more than one main study event each year.

Uniting members of the Library Association
There was also felt to be a need for all those involved in the health care field to be able to speak with one voice within the Library Association, and there was some pressure from the LA to achieve this. The Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group was therefore born out of a need to respond to changes in the wider health care sector, and a desire to unite Library Association members with interests in common – perhaps a rare feat given, (and I quote), “the tendency of librarians to sub-divide into smaller and more specialized interest groups” as it was expressed in a motion for debate at the Cardiff conference in 1993.

The formal objectives of the Group as expressed in its constitution are:

- to unite members of the Library Association working in or interested in medical, health and welfare libraries.

- to encourage discussion of the problems of these fields of librarianship

- to promote the interests of librarians and library services in these fields

The diversity of interest amongst members was self-evident and the aim was to meet the first objective by allowing that diversity to flourish within the unifying framework of the Group. The main mechanism for this has been the special interest subgroup. Other large LA Groups have tended to form geographical subgroups and thus also to establish close links with LA Branches, facilitating contact between members within an area, and perhaps improving understanding between different specialist arms of the profession. The greater pressure within Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group has been for members with special interests to meet on a national basis. One exception to this being the South West Sub Group which was formed in 1980 and which was wound up in 1988 – due at least in part in response to changing circumstances in health and welfare library provision.

The first sub group was the Prisons Libraries Sub Group which was already in existence as a subgroup of the Hospital Libraries Group. Although the librarian membership would never be large it was always very active, with considerable interest being shown by prison education officers at a time ripe for improving delivery of prison education and library services, and it went on to be granted full group status by the LA in 1984.

The Nursing Interest Sub Group was formed in 1980. Most activity had previously centred on a group loosely based around the Royal College of Nursing Library and this move perhaps reflected the greater hospitality of the new Group to health care librarians not working in traditional medical libraries. Although a number of members would have been librarians from multidisciplinary libraries, there were many separate nursing libraries, usually serving schools of nursing and with many of the problems associated with the early days of postgraduate medical education libraries, principally lack of resources and professionally qualified librarians and poor conditions for those who were in post. Librarians working in this sector felt a need to group together and to involve those tutors and clerical staff responsible for nursing libraries where no professional librarian was in post.

Not all these problems have been resolved and now there are further challenges posed by the move of nursing education into the Higher Education sector and the potential vacuum left when college libraries close on hospital sites leaving no established multidisciplinary provision to cater for the needs of trained nursing staff in hospitals and community. In consequence a continuing need is felt for a focus for those concerned with providing library services to nurses and the Libraries for Nursing Sub Group, as it is now called, continues to flourish, with, interestingly, the RCN library continuing to play a significant part, under its present librarian.

Two the most significant changes in the NHS have been the introduction of a philosophy of general management with the consequent professionalisation of management, and the introduction of the internal market with division between purchaser and provider. The Information for Management Sub Group, IFM Healthcare, was therefore founded in 1989/90 in response to an increasing awareness of the particular needs of librarians serving NHS Managers, especially those in that has become a purchasing function.

The Bibliotherapy (later Reading Therapy) Sub Group was established in 1982, and like the Prison Libraries and Nursing Interest sub groups had the aim of involving interested non-librarians. Innovative therapies were being introduced in fields such as care of the elderly, and the mentally ill, both in hospitals and in the community, and librarians felt they had much to offer.

The Domiciliary Services Sub Group was also formed in 1982, but although very active was disbanded in 1992 against a background of considerable change in the delivery of community health and social services brought about by the Care in the Community initiative, and a feeling that the whole position of community based welfare library services within the Library Association needed re-examination.

Fewer hospital library services now encompassed both health care and patients libraries and the emphasis had shifted from services for in-patients to community based provision, particularly in the mental health and learning disabilities fields, so that there were fewer librarians whose prime focus was the hospital setting. At the same time the situation for special services librarians had become more complete with an increasingly wide variety of community based residential and day care facilities and more people of all ages and varied disabilities being supported in their own homes.

Although there is also some overlap of interest with the Community Services Group of the LA, after a review process the decision has been taken to remain within the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group framework but to reconstitute Domiciliary Services and Reading Therapy into a Community Care subject group, once again illustrating the need in a continually changing world for our profession to adapt and change its institutions.

When the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group was inaugurated, the committee structure was designed to preserve a balance between medical/health interests and welfare interests, with two standing committees which could meet to discuss specialised business, although to begin with it was felt that little business was actually so specific with it could not usefully be discussed by the whole committee. As a result they rarely met, which itself had a unifying effect.

The standing committees did, however, start to meet regularly after a few years. Then in 1991 the conduct of the main committee business was reviewed amidst concern at the profile of welfare interests, since membership of the Group as a whole was much less balanced given the enormous expansion of NHS libraries. There has always been working groups to deal with specific themes. In the early years issues such as education and research were particularly important, but over time changes in these fields had lessened the role of the Group and other issues such as membership and recruitment had become more important whilst some like the Group Newsletter, programme and conference continued in importance and increased in complexity.

It was felt that, as in the early years, many issues were cross-sectoral and should either be discussed by the whole committee or delegated to such thematic advisory panels. The subject groups had also grown in importance in this context, since they were, in effect, taking on much of this work in key areas, but not in a way which was systematically fed back to the Main Group.

As Library Association Councillor for the Group I came to see interesting parallels here with the relationship between the LA and its specialist groups. The focus tends to be very specifically on programme activity and issues of particular importance to members. There is little time for taking the wider view on more general professional issues, a tendency not to understand the demands of the parent body, patchy communication both ways, but nonetheless a recognition by the parent body that much valuable work is being done which should be harnessed to the benefit of the whole organisation. Enthusiastic grass roots members may feel constrained by niceties of belonging to a hierarchical organisation which may seem cumbersome in operation, because of its democratic, constitutional framework, in this case ultimately embodied in the Royal Charter. Group meetings and conferences may be very successful, as may be their newsletters, but this may be at the expense of such activities carried out by the parent body, and may tend towards disunity.

The traditional pattern of the LA conference has had to be abandoned, and the greatest success in recent years has been through the mechanism of the Umbrella Conference, which brings together the LA’s Groups.

The Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group has had some problems in embracing enthusiastically this approach because of the difficulties of satisfying the diverse needs of its own various special interest groups within this format. The Group annual conference itself needs to provide an umbrella for its special interests if unity is to be maintained, and there have been contrary pressures, yet there is also a need to recognise our place in the wider Library Association family.

This pattern is repeated with newsletters. Each specialist interest group produces one and over time there may be a drive to improve standards and publish quality papers as well as news and current awareness. This may not only affect the viability of the main Group publications, but also can lead to awareness of specific issues being limited to a relatively few members sharing that specific interest, rather than the membership as a whole being well informed of the range of issues affecting it.

In turn members of the Group may not always have looked outwards to seek publication in the LA Record, so that a wider LA community has not always been as well informed as it might have been about the issues facing medical health and community care librarianship.

There are plainly issues of balance here, and no easy answers.

As mentioned earlier, the tendency within our Group has been to form special interest rather than geographical subgroups, with the one exception of the South West subgroup. This has not been surprising given the variety of specialisms in the field, but there has, I think, been another factor at work. Once Regional Librarians started to be appointed in some English NHS Regions the very proper growth of Regional networks, involving probably the majority of Group members in any area, although nit those solely engaged in welfare services, meant that there was no strong demand for organisation within the Group on a geographical basis, even though their role was very different from that of a professional association. In those Regions without a Regional Librarian, Regional Associations were gradually formed, and for practical reasons it was not appropriate for these to be set up as Medical Health and Welfare subgroups – a point to which I shall return. Ultimately the South West subgroup could not survive in parallel with this movement.

Another aspect of uniting members is that of linking our members with other groups of librarians in the field and the Group has maintained contact with other organisations such as the NHS Regional Librarians Group, the Association of Welsh Health Librarians and the Association of Scottish Health Sciences Librarians.

International contacts were very important to both the Medical Section and the Hospital Libraries Group and so it has been with Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group. Representation has been maintained whenever possible on appropriate sections of the International Federation of Library Associations, such as Biological and Medical Sciences, Libraries Serving Disadvantaged Persons and Libraries for the Blind, and Group members were instrumental in setting up the European Association for Health Information and Libraries which was launched in 1987, and of which the Group has been, through the Library Association, a corporate member since its inception. William Bishop had may USA contacts and was on the organising committee for the First International Congress on Medical Librarianship, and the commitment has been continued, not only in contacts with North America, but also by those Group members who have grasped the opportunities and challenges presented by the new European focus and have taken an active part in the European Association and the organisation of its conferences. There has also been a considerable commitment to engaging in the problems of health care libraries in the developing world, including more recently the impoverished ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe.

Before leaving the theme of unity I would like to pursue a further point.

A variety of special interests have flourished within the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group, though it has not always been easy to maintain unity, but many have also sought a voice outside the Group so that a number of non-Library Association organisations also exist which have some interest in the health care sector. Dr. Judy Palmer, Director of Health Care Libraries in the former Oxford Region, has provided a concise overview, which was published in the March 1994 Group Newsletter (3).

Our Group is essentially a special interest group of the largest professional association for librarians in the UK, and as such is governed by the Library Association’s Royal Charter. It normally, therefore, has to conduct its business with external agencies through, and in the name of, the Library Association. Policy statements, responses to consultation documents, etc., normally have to be approved by the LA and are published in its name. This has the advantage of conferring additional status, but has the disadvantage of slowing things down and perhaps weakening the focus on a specific sector. Also it is a membership organisation and not all librarians choose to belong.

Other organisations have come to be set up because a significant number of those involved are not members of the LA and have no wish to be, not least as the purpose of the organisation is not compatible with the need to progress business through LA channels, or because the need is to inform the working of another different parent body.

The formation of NHS Regional Associations illustrates the first two points particularly. It was important for their role that all appropriate staff in any Region should be able to join. It was also important that they should be able to communicate directly with and negotiate with various arms of NHS regional management, and it was particularly important that they should be in a position to be invited to send a representative to the NHS Regional Librarians’ Group, a representative who would then be able to function as a member of that Group. Therefore even in Regions where probably the majority were Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group members it was thought more appropriate to set up an independent association.

The NHS Regional Librarians’ Group itself has a special position in that in many respects it is more analagous to a chief officers’ group than anything else, and although it can in one sense claim to represent every Region this is not representation in the democratic sense, since it is only in those Regions with an Association and no Regional Librarian that there is any element of members’ choice in who represents the Region. This has in many respects been an advantage since the RLG could set and change its own constitution, has been freer to act, and has had access to policy makers.

That there are separate and distinct roles for the two organisations is recognised, and most Regional Librarians have been active also within the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group.

Recently there have been pleas for organisations within the health sector to speak with one voice if a clear message is to be heard by those in positions of influence, and the challenge for our Group and the Library Association will be how best to respond positively and work with other organisations to achieve this end. It may be, as Judy Palmer suggests, that what is required is an umbrella body, since it has to be remembered that the Library Association, the Institute of Information Scientists and Aslib could not ultimately agree upon merger despite the obvious advantages of the strength and unity which would have been presented to the outside world by a single organisation.

Encouraging discussion
The second objective of the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group is to encourage discussion of the problems of our field of librarianship, and the Group has sought to provide both opportunities for members to meet and other vehicles for dissemination of information and professional comment.

As already mentioned, since the Group’s inception an annual conference has been held offering a wide-ranging programme and parallel sessions, with the intention of bringing together the whole spectrum of Group interests on one major occasion in the year. Particularly in recent years this has not always succeeded to the desired extent, especially in attracting welfare delegates. This has partly been perceived as a marketing problem and in some years separate publicity has been produced to make it easier to demonstrate to employers the relevance of the event. However there have also been pressures to hold a separate weekend event, and this was done very successfully in 1989, although there was still welfare participation in the main conference.

Whatever the problems, the conference has become a large and successful event with over 250 delegates and a substantial exhibition each year, making it increasingly difficult to find varied venues and placing an enormous burden on those undertaking the task of organisation.

In addition to the annual conference the Group has sought to maintain an active programme of meetings, and subgroups have become increasing important contributors to this. The aim has always been to cover both issues of continuing interest and highly topical issues, and when appropriate the Group has joined forces with other organisations to hold joint events.

It is a requirement of LA Groups that they should produce a newsletter for members, though some Groups are more successful than others in this. Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group, like its predecessors, has succeeded in maintaining a useful and informative newsletter, sometimes it seemed against all the odds, but by 1983 its editing, publishing and distribution had become a very complex and demanding, not to say expensive, process and papers were being contributed which really deserved a wider audience.

The decision was taken, therefore, to accept the Editor’s proposal that an official journal carry more substantial papers be launched as a commercial publication and that the newsletter should continue as the vehicle for communication within the Group (4). Thus Health Libraries Review was born, published by Blackwell Scientific, with a preferential subscription rate for Group members, and the two publications have continued in tandem.

As previously indicated, at times it has been difficult to attract contributions from among the special interests and although more recently thematic issues with guest editorials have attempted to overcome this, problems of balance still remain, particularly in respect of welfare input. Generally, however, it has been a most successful venture, a tribute to the vision, hard work and tenacity of the editor, Shane Godbolt, and a credit to the Group. In 1989 a reduced subscription rate for EAHIL members was introduced, in the hope that Health Libraries Review might establish itself firmly as the voice of health care librarianship in Europe.

The Directory of Medical Libraries compiled by the Medical Section was already in its 4th edition when the Group was formed and had established itself as an important resource to aid communication. In 1981 it was decided to expand its scope to reflect better the interests of the new Group and it was renamed the Directory of Medical and Health Care Libraries in the UK and Republic of Ireland (5). It is now in its 9th edition.

By contrast the welfare section of the Group lacked similar comprehensive and current information about relevant library services. The Group did not have the resources to research such a publication from scratch but eventually assistance was offered by the Department of Library and Information Studies at Manchester Polytechnic and in 1984 the Directory of Domiciliary and Hospital Patients’ Library Services in the UK (6) was published. This yielded much useful information, but it is a matter of lasting regret that the work had to be carried out without benefit of information technology and the information was held in a form which meant it subsequently proved impossible to keep it up to date.

It has also become increasing important to promote discussion with the LA of issues concerning Group members to ensure that they are taken into account in the formulation of LA policies. The Group has always put forward ideas and responded to requests for comment or information on both internal issues such as the organisation of the LA itself and on external matters, but there have been times when communication in either direction has perhaps not been as good as it should be with resultant misunderstandings and tensions.

In the period before the formation of the Group there was a hospital libraries sub-committee at the LA, which brought together representatives of the two previous Groups with others and provided a very direct channel of communication. This impetus was perhaps lost in the immediate period after the amalgamation when the sub-committee was thought to be redundant. Subsequently, however, there has been growth in the direct representation of the Group within the LA structure, which has also improved the general relationship between the Group and its parent body.

In 1982 the Group achieved representation on the LA Salaries and Condition of Service sub-committee at a time when employment issues in the NHS were causing concern, as a result of the Group and the Regional Librarians’ Group working together with the LA to produce a guidance document on salary gradings for the NHS such as those produced for other sectors. This representation continued in the successor forum, the Special Libraries Sub-Committee of the Employment Committee.

More recently in 1989 it was recognised that the Group could contribute to the development of an equal opportunities policy, particularly in the area of disability and special needs, and also that there should be input from health libraries to the working party set up to identify professional duties in all library sectors.

It was also in 1989 the Groups were first represented on the LA Council, with Group councillors being directly elected by the membership of their respective Groups. All councillors served on one of the LA standing committees as well as being ex-officio members of their Group committees, and this provided a further channel of communication and greater insight into the workings of the LA as a whole. As Group Councillor I chose to sit on the Library and Information Services Committee which handled many issues of interest to the Group, but committees such as Information Technology, Employment and International would also have been relevant.

Following the failure of talks about possible amalgamation of the LA with the Institute of Information Scientists and Aslib it was decided that the structure of the LA should be reviewed to ensure that it would be equipped to meet the challenges facing the profession. One issue which quickly emerged during the consultation exercise was that it was going to be quite difficult to accommodate the very wide range of interests of the Group compared with most other Groups, and one suggestion was that there should be some form of Health Libraries Committee or Forum. Although this was not definitely part of the structure agreed by Council at the end of 1993, further discussion was to take place. The problem of overlap of interest with other sectors such as public and academic libraries would, however, remain.

It has also been the practice in recent years for the Group committee to meet at LA headquarters whenever possible, thus facilitating attendance by the LA officer designated to liaise with the Group, and this has proved extremely useful.

An example of the greater awareness by the LA of the needs of members was the decision to publish a separate pamphlet on copyright for the NHS, (7) since it was recognised that although the content was not significantly different it would help members in dealing with managers and clients to have an authoritative guide obviously written for the sector.

I have commented before, but would like to take this opportunity of saying again, that the more I had to do with LA staff the more impressed I was by the sheer range, quality and quantity of work carried out. Membership of the LA is often perceived as being expensive for little return beyond membership of Groups and the Record, and I do not know how one can alter this impression, especially as the LA is not a union and therefore cannot behave in a way which members often seem to think it should. Perhaps people do not always see the personal benefit from copyright negotiations or work on bibliographical and technical standards, yet these are vital to our professional practice. I suspect that there are less active Group members who feel the same about the Group and yet are reluctant to get involved and effect change.

Promoting our interests
The third objective of the Group is to promote the interests of librarians and library services and the Group has endeavoured to keep a watching brief on the activities of other related bodies, to disseminate information to them, and promote discussion with them.

Sometimes this has been achieved by direct contact where it is appropriate for the Group to be directly represented, for example, participation in the planning for the 1981 International Year for Disabled Persons; membership of the Royal National Institute for the Blind Advisory Panel selecting titles for braille and talking book production; participation in the Medical Information Working Party set up in 1984 to bring together representatives of the Group, the Booksellers’ Association, the Publishers’ Association and the Association of Subscription Agents; and joint meetings under the auspices of the Regional Librarians Group and the Nursing Information Sub Group with representatives of the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting.

Usually contact with other bodies, especially official organisations, is organised under the auspices of the LA, and policy statements, responses to consultation documents etc., are normally drafted for approval by, and onward transmission in the name of, the LA. Where appropriate this drafting will be the responsibility of a particular Subgroup, as in the case of nursing education issues. Where other interests within the LA are also involved the Group will submit comments, or may be involved in a drafting group.

Policy statements such as that in 1987 on The use of volunteers in welfare libraries (8) or guidelines to services such as Guidelines for library services to people who are housebound (9) published in 1991 were progressed in this way, as were responses to the Working for Patients white paper and the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing Midwifery and Health Visiting Post Registration Education and Practice Project. Although this inevitably slows down the process, such documents do then carry the authority of the Library Association.

Where appropriate and where resources allow the LA may take action in support of one sector of the membership and a particular initiative was originated by the LA Special Libraries Subcommittee in 1987/88, in the form of a campaign to raise awareness among General Managers in the NHS of the value of professional qualified librarians, using a specially designed leaflet.

Once the salary gradings guidance document had been produced this was kept up to date like those for other sectors and used as the basis of advice by the LA to members and employers in the NHS. Whenever possible the LA has made representations to employers advertising unsuitably graded posts, and has also assisted many members individually. In 1988 a guide for members on submitting a regrading claim in the NHS was produced and subsequently, like the grading document, revised to take account of a new grading structure which had been introduced.

Sometimes the Group is invited to submit information, as in 1984 when the Library and Information Services Council (England) was preparing a report on the future development of libraries and invited the Group to submit a paper giving its views on “how medical, health and welfare librarians see the problems and opportunities of their services and how the suggested developments take place”. A paper was produced, approved by the LA and submitted to LISC, and the Chairman and Secretary attended a LISC meeting to answer questions. LISC agreed to publication of the paper provided its response was published at the same time, and both appeared in Health Libraries Review (10). Unfortunately LISC took the view that purposive local planning was preferable to any form of national direction.

In 1989 LISC (England) invited a submission on consumer health information services, and again subsequently it was released for publication in Health Libraries Review (11). A pilot scheme was shortly afterwards approved for funding under the Public Library Development Incentive Scheme, but again it was not felt appropriate to recommend any sort of national direction – ironic to say the least in the light of subsequent events surrounding the Patients Charter initiatives.

Conclusion
It its first fifteen years the Group has, therefore, aimed to fulfil its objectives in a variety of ways, and has evolved to try and meet new challenges. The position of a democratic membership organisation is a problematical one, with members being the natural focus, rather than the outside world, and it can be difficult to muster the right advice at the right level and within the necessary timescale to have any impact on external events. These are challenges that face the Library Association itself and lie at the heart of the perceived need for its recent restructuring.

For the Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group there have been successes and failures during this time, but it is a very active group compared with some in the LA, holding well attended meetings and conferences of some sophistication, sustaining a thriving newsletter and a journal, and with relatively healthy finances. Twice in this period the Group has submitted to a review process instigated by the LA and has been complimented on its activities and the presentation of its reports. It has, I feel, justified the leap of faith made by those who agreed in 1977 to work together. I trust that we can continue to grow and adapt in the future.

REFERENCES
1. Willis, A. Library Association Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group, 1978-1992. Health Libraries Review 1993, 10, 111-118

2. Obituary: Jennifer Wade, BA, FLA. Health Libraries Review 1990, 7, 180-181; 1991, 8, 59-60

3. Palmer, J. Professional associations in health information. Newsletter: Library Association Medical, Health and Welfare Libraries Group 1994, 11 (1), viii, x-xiii.

4. Godbolt, S and Valentine, P. Health Libraries Review: the need, the challenge and the future. In: C Deschampsand M. Walckiers (eds) Medical Libraries: Co-operation and the new technologies. North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1987

5. Wright, D. (ed) Directory of medical and health care libraries in the U.K. and Republic of Ireland. 9th ed., London: Library Association, 1994.

6. Collison, J. (ed) Directory of domiciliary and hospital patients’ library services in the U.K. London: Library Association Medical, Health and Welfare Libraries Group; Manchester: Department of Library and Information Studies, Manchester Polytechnic, 1984

7. Copyright in NHS Libraries. London: Library Association, 1990.

8. The use of volunteers in welfare libraries: policy statement. London: Library Association, 1987.

9. Domiciliary Service Subject Group of the Library Association Medical, Health and Welfare Libraries Group. Guidelines for library services to people who are housebound. London: Library Association, 1991
10. King, T.A. National provision for medical, health and welfare information: The LAMHWLG’s submission to LISC’s working party on the Future Development of Libraries (FD3). Health Libraries Review 1986, 3, 167-176

11. Willis, A. Health information services: a submission to LISC by the Library Association on behalf of its Medical, Health and Welfare Libraries Group. Health Libraries Review 1989, 6, 83-88.

Updated: 08 August 2005

Health Libraries

The Medical Health and Welfare Libraries Group 1978-1992.

The Bishop Memorial Lecture 1994 by Anne Willis

The Bishop Memorial Lecture 1994
by Anne Willis