Trying to work out how to teach library skills in an engaging way is an ongoing mission for lots of us. My latest attempt at thinking about why we need to consider alternate terms when we search involved shaking down my 3 year old niece for some of her beautiful drawings (don’t worry, I actually just asked her if she would mind me using them in my classes; also checked with her parents; and only photographed them so they could keep and treasure the works of art forever.)…
The Library and Knowledge Service at East Cheshire NHS Trust has always offered sessions in topics such as evidence search, critical appraisal etc. The majority of these sessions delivered were 1:1 in…
Last year we acquired a new resource called Anatomy TV. We wanted to raise awareness of this new resource and encourage usage so we devised a marketing plan to help us do this. We decided to focus on what the user could achieve by using this resource, rather than just simply telling them they have access to it. The message we wanted to convey was “Improve your knowledge of anatomy”. We thought this would appeal to staff wanting to update their existing knowledge and also to students needing to learn anatomy for their studies.…
This short piece is about our service and work we have done together since the last update in September 2020. We welcomed back Laura Jeffreys, Knowledge Specialist: Quality, returning from maternity leave part-time in August which has given us all a lift and increased our capacity as a team. The Transformation process at PCFT, and the ongoing effects of COVID-19 continue to affect our ability to build stable relationships and implement systems. We are still all working predominantly from home, with some limited attendance in the office to maintain systems & for health and wellbeing. Some face to face inductions and training are cautiously restarting, which is both exciting and challenging. A 5 year plan has now been accepted by the Board, and we welcome Simon Sandhu to the post of Deputy Medical Director.…
For several years, the Leeds Community Healthcare (LCH) NHS Trust Library team has subscribed to BrowZine (from ThirdIron) for LCH users. In 2020 we extended the subscription to include NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) staff, including all primary care colleagues in Leeds, giving a much more consistent service to our users.…
In the final parallel session of LILAC’s online mini-conference this year, I learned about King’s College London’s experience of applying a ‘flipped classroom’ approach to information skills training from Karen Poole, one of their learning and teaching librarians.…
In common with services everywhere, the service we have been able to provide over the past year has been coloured by the Trust’s response to COVID-19 and the guidance around that. The physical service was provided from the Library & Evidence Research Centre at Leeds General Infirmary, with staff coming into LGI on a rota to maintain safe minimal staffing, and working from home the rest of the time. We managed to maintain five-day opening for much of the year, but dropped to three days for March and April 2021, and are now back up to four days a week. Alongside the physical service we promoted electronic access, continued to deliver our literature search and enquiry services, and moved training over to remote delivery.…
The library space, along with the rest of the 2nd floor at Stockdale House (our Trust HQ) was officially opened in March 2020 – one week before everyone get sent to work from home. We had at least benefitted from the summer 2019 refurb for several months before lockdown occurred.…
If you had told us in early 2020 that we would be able to run our library from home we wouldn’t have believed you. Thankfully the last year has been a great one for growth (although we’re hoping to be back in situ soon!)…
2020 was a year like no other. In March 2020 with the rise of Covid19 cases and the country going into lockdown, 3 of the 4 library staff were redeployed, at very short notice, to support HR and managers with the recruitment and induction process. This involved contacting all new starters and sorting badges, IT log ins etc etc and doing a local induction. This was a time consuming process, taking on average 4 hours per new starter. At any one time each library staff member had approximately 20 new starters at various stages of the process.…
