Susan Smith, Knowledge & Library Manager, Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
In 2023, I was granted the ALIA / HLG Leadership Bursary. It provided an introduction to several Australian & New Zealand colleagues, who met with me to share information about their service structure, delivery, and current challenges. They also provided coaching and access to online conferences.
When conversing with each library lead, the key thing that struck me was the value of the strategic function that NHS England Workforce, Transformation & Education gives to health libraries in the UK. Knowledge for Healthcare governs our strategic direction, training priorities and quality assurance processes – without this direction, the ALIA (Australian Library and Information Association) finds advocacy more challenging. Networks are essential to overcome the geographic and private provider group challenges.
The ALIA’s current focus is around new hospital accreditation, clarification on library standards for Australian medical training programmes and library impact. This mirrors our own national work on the Quality & Outcome Impact Framework and links educational contract, which funds the training of healthcare staff. From a recent HSJ webinar, Ben Shemesh (The Health Foundation) shared that in Australia, My Health Record has been centralized. Data is shared federally across the organizations and there is a 10-year digital health strategic blueprint. In the UK, there is widespread variation in technology and digital maturity.
The Australian health record has around 90% uptake, but has low usage, particularly amongst First Nation people. When developing technological solutions, it is important to develop services that do not exclude and build trust in systems. We need to take opportunities to upskill people in digital and information literacy at all opportunities. Failure to do so will inevitably lead to health inequalities and poor health outcomes for many of our patients. The NHS App has added value by empowering and activating our users to take control of their own health, by offering access to information and booking appointments. There are opportunities for cross-learning on digital transformation and literacy projects, including results from the recent partnership between Library Connected and NHS England to support the use of the NHS App.
The NHS Knowledge & Library Hub is a single discovery service for NHS health libraries in England content, supported by five key regional shared Library Management Systems (LMS). Seeing a demonstration of Koha from one mentor, prior to us joining one of the shared systems, was useful in forming my thinking around our practice and policy. There is growing reliance on national systems and interoperability of them. NHS organisations are always in flux though, but one of the constants is local library networks – they are the bedrock of the service.
Reflecting on how ALIA libraries operate made me realise how much these networks diminished over COVID. Strong strategical approach by NHS England brought a united direction, provided clear frameworks, and supported advocacy and reporting, but librarians on the ground felt railroaded and disempowered.
National budgetary cuts left gaps in central funding and service provision. A gap that local networks could support.
The fellowship encouraged me to take action to rebuild the Library & Information Health Network Northwest (LIHNN). It is a subscribed membership model for anyone with an interest in health libraries in the northwest of England. After surveying the membership:
- We restructured the funding and brought back an in-person Christmas Study Day and virtual AGM
- A series of social events were developed to re-engage members – in addition, we have created options for retired members or people who have left the network to stay connected.
- New starters events and buddy scheme were relaunched.
We have used information from these sessions to redevelop our online presence and will shortly be looking at creating virtual visits to our member libraries to help people get to know others in the system and the different ways we operate. As well as welcoming people to our network activities, we developed content to support with transition, with topics on culture shock, imposter syndrome and building confidence. We have started to develop our partnerships to improve value and this year, ran the first joint event with the Academic Libraries North group on Value and Impact and we co-ordinated activities in partnership with CILIP North West.
It also inspired me to lead on a few ground-up collaborations, including a resource for Writing for Publication, supporting the collaboratively developed NHS AI Literacy Training sessions and restarting a national list of health current awareness bulletins which can be shared between library services to save effort and duplication. There is great power in local network collaboration, where gaps are identified, and work is spread throughout the network.
Another network I began to develop to link up local library network leads to share practice and training events – the plan was to offer shadowing opportunities for people in committees of different networks outside of their regions. One of the actions we are working on is a Quality Outcome Impact Framework community of practice as a safe space for librarians to share and discuss preparation and learning. From the coaching conversations, I re-evaluated priorities to stop spreading myself so thinly and I now concentrate on only a few, so these projects are on hold and it helped me focus back on my core library practice.
Thank you to HLG & ALIA for this amazing opportunity. It has been an inspiration, and I have valued the coaching, knowledge exchange and having that external sounding board. It has been a warm and welcoming experience which I would recommend others to pursue. Also, thank you to all the other library staff who have shared their time and experience to co-develop the projects and give their time to make them a success.
Health Libraries Group 