I started my professional library career with a two year stint at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, before moving to work at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) in 1996. I was fortunate to have Ian King as my manager at BRI, and even though I was only in that post for two years, he taught me a huge amount about health libraries (although memories of his “filing system” still make me shudder!)…
Look how far we’ve come. In the early 90’s, not too long before David Stewart’s arrival in the North-West, we remember using computers with DOS based operating systems and giant floppy disks! We had racks of printed Index Medicus. Working in a Postgraduate Medical Centre, we were told, ‘Don’t let Nurses in’. If a Doctor was willing to pay for a ‘speedy’ literature search, we dialled into Datastar’s Radio-Suisse via a modem. The printed Index Medicus quickly became redundant as word spread about this new-fangled gadget from the Swiss!…
I’m Dan. I currently work as the Library Manager at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. I’ve been asked to write a short piece on my experience as a new manager within the network. I’m really pleased to be contributing to this special edition Northern Lights.…
I started working in NHS libraries in 1997 as a volunteer at The Christie Hospital library following a placement from Manchester Metropolitan University. What inspired me to volunteer at The Christie was a talk given to students about a typical day in an NHS library by Nigel Rainford, a “Systems Librarian” who did searches for medical and nursing staff. Nigel eventually moved on to public libraries and I was fortunate to get the chance to be the full time Systems Librarian at The Christie in February 1999. A lot has changed since then.…
A personal view of the development of health libraries over the last twenty years? As it happens, I joined the NHS in spring 2000, so the development of health libraries and my career have travelled in parallel. Let me say now, I came into health libraries by accident; only moving across from business support because the DTI decided to close the Business Link network, and I needed a job. What that meant was that I came in as an experienced manager, but with no knowledge of or experience in health, and equally no baggage or preconceptions.…
You are the same, the role is different. Times too Stepping up to management is always a challenge, but especially during COVID-19. I was appointed Library Manager at Bradford District Care NHS FT in June 2020. This is my personal experience transitioning from librarian to manager. There are two elements that helped me navigate this new role.…
