HLG Nursing Bulletin Vol 32 (3/4)
A day in the life of Alison Paul, Deputy Library and Knowledge Services Manager, Ashford and St Peters’ NHS Foundation Trust, Surrey
A Day in the Life of Alison Paul
Friday 12th October 2012
I have worked in healthcare libraries for over twenty years and have worked for the NHS for over ten years. I am the Deputy Library Knowledge Services Manager of a two site Acute NHS Foundation Trust in Surrey and have been in post nearly five years and work across both sites.
My day starts early with the alarm clock going off at 5am and I leave home at 5.45am arriving at work at St Peters’ at 7.30 am – thankfully no delays on the M25 this morning! Once at work I have an hour and a half before the library opens and the rest of the staff arrive so I spend my time answering e-mails and catching up on filing.
At 8.45am I head across the site to do an induction for forty new staff for Surrey Community Health – I do a ten minute talk on the physical and virtual library services available across Surrey and answer any questions. I hand out Surrey library brochures, registration forms and a key-ring with the Ashford and St Peter’s Hospital library website. I tell them I will come back at 12.30 to collect any registration forms and answer any other queries.
9.30am – Back in the office I print out the handouts, sign-in sheets and evaluation forms for the afternoon training session and put laminated cards on the seven computers needed for the afternoon session.
10am – I have an appraisal review to do with one of the Library Assistants – looking at how the previous six months have gone and how they are getting on with their objectives since their full appraisal. A very productive meeting.
11am – I update our marketing strategy for the rest of the financial year looking at key ways and events to promote the library services to users and non-users. Then I look at the previous month’s electronic budget report from our finance department and ensure that everything that has come out of our budget is actually in the libraries as sometimes the wrong budget is code entered – especially when departments buy their own books and the libraries get billed by mistake! I then e-mail our budget accountant with my queries.
12.30pm – I am back at the induction event during their lunch break to collect any registration forms and answer any more queries.
1pm – Back at my desk and eating my lunch I work on the November rota for the two site service ensuring we have adequate professional and non-professional cover for both sites.
1.30pm – I head into the IT room set up the projector and get my PowerPoint presentation and web sites ready for the training.
2pm – I have a training session for ‘Literature Searching Skills for Researchers’ – seven people have booked on the course and all turn up eventually. The course usually runs for two hours involving presentations, demonstrations and hands-on training but being only half full it finishes at 3.30 with only a couple of people staying on to work on their own.
3.30pm – back at my desk I enter the statistics and feedback from the evaluation forms from the training. The rest of the day is peaceful and I have chance to catch up on the e-mails which have come in.
4pm – I have a quick meeting with the two library assistants responsible for print and e-journals to see if there are any issues over missing journals, problems with e-access etc.
5pm – I often don’t leave on the dot of 5 but tonight being Friday I am promptly out the door. Friday night joys of the M25 and M23 but on the bright side at least it’s not raining today – good drive tonight and home just after 7pm.
Health Libraries Group 