Health Library Conference
During the last week of July, my husband and I packed up to head to the Health Library Group (HLG) conference in Oxford. We spent three days in the city, two of which I spent in the conference while Philip visited bookshops and did the tourist thing. We also had an air conditioned room in a hotel which was amazing! The conference was fine, but OMG--AIR CONDITIONING!
So anyway, Oxford was hot. It's kind of hard for me to get past this one thing since it was an ever-present annoyance. But I'll try to stay on topic. The conference took place in the Examination School. It was a beautiful building with huge old paintings and lots of ornamental design. The two days were filled with talks on an assortment of health library topics and there were many vendors with enticing, free-one-month trials of this and that. It made me wish I could make purchase-type decisions at my place of work, but alas I cannot.
In fact, this was also an annoying part of the experience. The conference is aimed for more manager-types who can make the big decisions based on what other libraries have done to make themselves successful. I have lots of ideas, but I am in no real position to do much about them. Don't get me wrong, I do suggest things from time to time. But anyone who has an ounce of ambition and has been at the bottom of the totem-pole probably knows what I am talking about. Nevertheless, I tried to put these feelings away and concentrate on what I could get out of the conference as someone new to health libraries.
There are lots of individual things I could discuss here. Interesting projects or new technologies that could make a huge impact on a library. However, if I had to look at the larger picture, I would have to say that there is a push to get NHS librarians out of the library and into the wards. According to the PHE Knowledge strategy for 2014, our goal should be making sure:
“Everyone working in public health will spend less time finding the information and knowledge they need and more time using it.”
“The right knowledge will be available to the right people at the right time in a form they are able to use.”
Of course, by saying that one needs to get out into the ward, this does not always mean that the librarian needs to be physically out of the library at all times. Rather, as one librarian at the conference showed us, this can involve creating a focus group of health care professionals who assist in guiding the substance of library services. It could mean lots of different things and it will be interesting to see what other creative solutions different libraries will come up with.
I also gained some more insight into Health Education England's (HEE) role as an umbrella organization over NHS libraries. This should lead to more unified policies and procedures which may give us a better ability to show our value to government. NHS libraries will be able to have their own local policies, but having some things regulated nationally will hopefully save time and effort in the long run. At any rate, only time will tell.
On the whole, I enjoyed the conference and I liked meeting new people. We had a lovely dinner in the Old Town Hall Thursday evening. I'm not sure whether I would continue to go every year unless I was a manager, but to gain an understanding of what this job is about, the conference provided me with invaluable information.
