Tom Roper, CILIP Health Libraries Group
Judy Palmer, former editor of Health Information and Libraries Journal and chair of the group, died in Oxfordshire on 12 April, aged 84. She was born in Bulawayo in what was then Southern Rhodesia, and, after completing a BSc in zoology and chemistry at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and a short time in London, qualified in librarianship in Zambia, working at the University of Zambia and for the British Council. She came to Britain for good in 1979, to posts at the Cairns library at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, before becoming Head of Library and Information Services at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, the world’s longest running agricultural institution.
In 1993 she returned to Oxford, and to health, succeeding Peter Leggate at the Cairns. Her characteristic drive and energy made her the obvious candidate to take on the chairpersonship of what was then the Medical Health and Welfare Group of the Library Association, HLG’s forefather. At this time the MHWLG committee lacked clear direction, and no one was better suited to bringing us direction and purpose. She was firm and fair, perceptive and plain speaking, sometimes a little forbidding, but tempered with wit and a dry sense of humour.
At Oxford’s Health Care Libraries Unit, she co-ordinated the work of health librarians in forty-five insitutions across the university-NHS divide, established the Librarian of the Twenty-First Century programme of professional development, played a leading role in the Regional Librarians Group and provided national leadership in developing the role of libraries in evidence-based research.
When Shane Godbolt, HILJ’s founding editor, stood down, Judy took on the daunting task of succeeding her as editor, and ran the journal with care and rigour. Her final post before retirement was as Keeper of Scientific Books at the Radcliffe Science Library, and she became a fellow of Keble College.
In retirement she trained as a counsellor, and worked in prisons and with refugees.
Health librarians in Britain and around the world owe her much. Judy, with others, made the professional landscape in which we now operate.
A full obituary will appear in Health Information and Libraries Journal in due course.
Health Libraries Group 