CILIP HLG Conference, 24TH-25TH July 2014, Oxford Examination Schools, Oxford
I was fortunate enough to be awarded a generous student bursary by Health Libraries Group
(HLG) to enable me to attend their conference this year in Oxford. The biennial event attracts
a wide range of healthcare library and information practitioners both as speakers and
delegates. As a relative newcomer to the library sector and, more specifically, healthcare
libraries, I was delighted to be attending my first conference. So, during what felt like some of
the hottest days of the year, I spent two days in the grand setting of the Oxford Examination
Schools listening, learning and storing away ideas for future reference.
At the opening of the conference, one of the slides in CILIP CEO Annie Mauger’s Keynote
speech on Building our professional value contained a quote from Sage BL Summit 2012:
“Attention will shift from the library to the librarian. The information professional is the library
of the future”. This was a tag line for the conference and introduced one of the themes - the
value of the librarian beyond the four walls of the library. We were urged not to wait for people
to come to us.
A concurrent theme was measuring impact. Tom Roper (Brighton and Sussex NHS Library
and Knowledge Services) and Archana Deshmukh (University of Brighton) combined the two
themes with a presentation on Measuring the impact of the clinical librarian service,
highlighting the difficulties of quantitative measuring in this context. In her Keynote speech on
the second day, Lisa Hughes, the Strategy Lead for Health Education England, talked us
through the Library and Knowledge Services (LKS) Strategic Framework due out December
2014 and recommended that all services use the Impact Toolkit available.
Also on Day Two, Tracey Pratchett & Joanne Shawcross of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation
Trust demonstrated an example of librarians working beyond the traditional remit of the
healthcare library as they spoke about Managing information flows in critical times. Using
their cataloguing and indexing skills as information management specialists collating
documentary evidence, they had supported the work of a team investigating the maternity
and neonatal services within the Trust. Their engagement with other departments and
handling of sensitive issues and material in challenging circumstances reminded me once
again of Annie Mauger’s earlier encouragement to reach beyond the boundaries of the library.
I found the whole of this session particularly interesting as the first half had featured a
presentation by Anne Webb and Steve Glover from The Christie NHS Foundation Trust on
Developing library services to support Research and Development (R&D). The process
of setting up and developing a research publications repository for the Trust was described in
some detail. Positive results after five years include increased visibility for the organisation’s
research, a good historical record of publications and improved manageability of material.
This was a fantastic example of the current growth in collaboration between researchers and
healthcare library services, and the increase in institutional repositories within the NHS and
library support for research funding applications. The message seems to be that ensuring we
are key players in our organisation’s R&D will demonstrate our contribution to core objectives
and build outward-looking relationships for the future. Once again this is an example of
building our professional value.
Attending the conference was a valuable experience for me as a LIS student and as a library
assistant. There was an incredible amount of information to absorb over the two days, much
of which I am sure will prove useful at different stages of my studies. The availability of the
presentations on the HLG webpages will provide a very useful resource to return to. Relating
the themes and messages of the conference to the work of library assistants in front line
services, I think that we perhaps have less opportunity to work ‘beyond’ the boundaries of the
library because of the nature of our job. However, through our day-to-day running of the
service, and knowledge of our customers, we can help to identify new opportunities for the
library to increase its involvement in improving patient care. Collaboration of professional and
non-professional staff is vital in demonstrating the professional value of a library service.
There are many ideas that I will take away with me – not just from the sessions, but also from
the poster exhibitions, the suppliers’ exhibitions, the networking throughout the day and at the
conference dinner. As a conference first-timer I enjoyed the atmosphere of belonging to a
large library community and am grateful to HLG for the opportunity.
Sarah Harris, Library Assistant, Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and MA
Information and Library Studies Student, Aberystwyth University (Distance Learning)