This edition of the HILJ club has been prepared by Alan Fricker, NHS Knowledge and Library Hub Manager. @alanfricker
Paper for Discussion
REGULAR FEATURE: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES AND INITIATIVES
Transforming and extending library services by embracing technology and collaborations: A case study
Terrie R. Wheeler AMLS, Diana Delgado MLS, AHIP, Paul J. Albert MLS, Sarah Ben Maamar PhD, Peter R. Oxley PhD, HILJ v39 (3). Available: https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12439 Open Access
Introduction
This article is a portrait of the service offer at Samuel J. Wood Library at Weill Cornell Medicine. It explores how this offer has developed to embrace services enhanced by and developed through technological advances. There is a focus on how this relates to user needs in a medical school academic library setting closely aligned to a hospital.
Discussion
I picked this article as it spoke to a previous role of mine in an NHS / Higher Education Institution cross over institution. WCM is a small institution with an intake of 100 medical students per year but the library is delivering an impressive array of services to users. With a team of 30 plus people there is involvement in areas including patient information, systematic review (30 published in 2021), teaching of students, literature searching for clinical care, data management, scholarly publishing and bioinformatics.
The authors recognise that there is an imperative to save the time of the user and extend their ability to deliver against patient care, research and education. The acknowledment that this may involve sometimes trying things that do not work out is commendable.
There are doubtless elements within the WCM service that could be well picked up by academic libraries to consider how their offer meets current and developings needs. For those working predominantly with clinicians the summary of the clinical service on their libguide is worth a read.
As a case study this is by nature a simple publication but I might have liked to have seen a bit more by way of context to help other services put what WCM offer in context.
Potential questions for consideration
How specialised a service can you deliver from within a general academic library / hospital library versus a closely integrated smaller specialist service like WCM?
Which service would you most like to develop for your users? What are the barriers and how might you address them?
The article identifies three greatest challenges for health sciences libraries:
- integrating intuitive tools into the user workflow
- demand for services out stripping capacity
- belief that all library services are free / without cost
To what extent do you agree with these?
HILJ Club 