Wednesday 7 June 2017

Moving forward - a catchup post

I fear my blog has been sorely neglected in the past few months. I'm not sure if it was the exhiliaration of completing the Knowledge for Healthcare Leadership Development Programme or the prospect of dealing with the coming financial year but either way I'm back to share what I've been up to since February.

I attended a Synthesising and summarising workshop led by Tim Buckley Owen. The event covered a variety of methods for streamlining and categorising search results for users without losing valuable and relevant papers. The idea is to minimise the work the user has to do from the results received. What stood out to me was the need to scan through my results at least once to get a flavor of what my search retrieves which then puts me in a better position to select, reject and prioritise especially since my background isn't clinical. Although the concept of summarising seemed straight forward, the reality was much more daunting for me. Abstracts can be helpful but in the grand scheme of day to day tasks I find it difficult to incoporate this into my work. There was also a Finding and summarising evidence for service transformation worshop led by Anne Gray. The purpose of the course was to help librarians understand how to find and present evidence for different clientele such as commissioners and managers. I learnt about sources these clientele are normally familiar with and how it informs the decisions they make.

The Searching and beyond workshop led by Morwenna Rogers, Rebecca Abbot, Alison Bethel was a revelation for me. I have not had any direct experience in systematic reviews myself but I have often wondered how I would cope if such a request was made. This workshop put all my fears to rest. It had just the right mix of preparatory work, activities and teaching. I learnt about the various steps involved in completing a systematic revew and what each one entails. From scoping searches to protocols and data extraction, no stone was left unturned. It helped me to make sense of the process and establish questions I should be asking if supporting a systematic review. What I took away as the highlight was the need to determine who is on the systematic review team and identify my role within that team. It has led me to add support for systematic reviews as a service we offer which is currently being promoted.

I was involved in a discussion about the possibility of pursuing a Masters in Library Science without having to pay tuition. My investigation yielded results which really suprised me because apparently you can. It involves the expense of travel but I believe that is a small sacrifice. The University of Boras offers a Masters programme in Library and Information Science, Digital Library and Information Services which is free to EU citizens. It requires the completion of 120 credits over a 2 year period and never fear, the instrucion is in English.

As part of the Midlands E-Procurement Group, I am learning about the resource deals available and it is also giving me the opportunity to put faces to names within my new NHS Library Service region. I am happy to say my project work for the leadership programme proved useful for me when I needed to develop the Library survey. I am looking forward to Health Information Week #HIW2017 and the Midlands and East Health Libraries Summer Conference. I'll be keeping you informed in my next post.