Working in an NHS Trust: Senior Librarian
by Anne Jones
Organisation
I am the Senior Librarian in an NHS Trust which provides both acute care in a General Hospital and in community hospitals over a large rural area. We offer a multidisciplinary service, so our readers come from all professions and disciplines within health care. We also offer services to a growing number of students from all health professions on placement within the Trust.
We support their clinical, research, and educational needs with both physical and “virtual” resources, making use of the Library's Intranet page to assist readers in community and primary care settings at a distance from the Trust's headquarters.
There are three members of the library staff, and it is important that we are able to carry out all routine library duties and procedures and answer all kinds of queries, but we also have our own special areas of interest. The Assistant Librarian is responsible for services to students, for inter-library loans, journals and binding; the Library Assistant maintains the Library web page on the Trust's Intranet, is responsible for the design of all library forms and publicity material and runs the photocopy service. Both support our current awareness services.
We all keep up-to-date with professional developments by attending courses and training sessions run by the Trust and by external bodies.
Main Duties
• Ensuring that the Library Service meets the specifications of the HeLicon (Health Libraries and Information Confederation) accreditation scheme; ensuring that the Library Service meets any targets set by the annual Commissioning visit (a visit by the Dean's team from the University of Wales College of Medicine).
• Stock selection, in consultation with our readers; classifying and cataloguing on to the all-Wales catalogue for health care libraries; preparing new books bulletins.
• Using databases and the Web to search for information on readers' behalf; teaching readers to use the databases and the Web to search for reliable, evaluated material; preparing teaching materials.
• Promoting and supporting evidence based practice and clinical effectiveness to clinicians and managers.
• Writing and selecting the content for the Library Homepage on the Trust's Intranet.
• Attending meetings of committees within the Trust with an educational remit, e.g. the Multi-professional Education Group, the Medical and Dental Education Committee.
• Promoting the Library Service by providing publicity and information about the services we provide.
• Taking part in research projects, e.g. the North Wales Clinical Librarian Project.
• Supporting special projects like the Modernisation Programme.
• Maintaining links with AWHILES, the Welsh health libraries co-operative organisation; with HOWIS (Health of Wales Information Service)
• Liaising with external suppliers, journal agents, booksellers etc.
Anne Jones
Senior Librarian
Updated: 24 October 2005