There’s been a big turnaround of staff at Bradford! The physical library space was closed to readers at the beginning of the pandemic and we also said goodbye to Lead Librarian Federica Bianchini, who moved on to Bradford Care trust. After a nine month period where the service was delivered by library assistants Louise and Caroline, I was appointed as Knowledge and Resources Librarian at the start of January. It’s been a steep learning curve, never having worked in an NHS library before, and I’m grateful to everyone, both at Bradford and in the wider network of librarians in the North, who have been there to answer all my questions.
We also have two new trainee librarians in post, who will be pursuing distance librarianship qualifications in the coming year. Mathew joined us from North Yorkshire Libraries and Aki brings her experience form working a University of Leeds Library.
2020 was obviously very difficult, for everyone, but more so given the staffing situation. We are now working hard to get the message out that we are still here, providing literature searches, support and access to resources. We are mostly working on site in the library, however, we are only offering a click and collect service for print books and have temporarily lost our study space and open access computers due to hosting the Covid Vaccination hub. While it’s great that the vaccination effort is going so well at Bradford, we still have our fingers crossed that other accommodation will be located for the vaccination organisation team, and that we will be able to re-open the library space for browsing and study. In the meantime we are continuing to develop our digital offering, concentrating our budget on remote access resources and with Caroline redeveloping our website.
The next challenge will be delivering the service without Louise, who after over 30 years of service to the NHS in Bradford , is taking a well -earned retirement in April. The race to capture all the expertise she has developed in document control for Trust wide policies and navigating the labyrinth of NHS procurement procedures is on.
Alison Forde
Knowledge and Resource Librarian | Education | Fieldhouse
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
http://www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk
