Submitted by Maria Luisa Maquedano
Whatever
we call them -- medical librarian, clinical librarian, informationist,
ISIC or information specialist—the librarians who render their services in
hospitals are active agents in the development and application of the new roles
demanded by their patrons. However, the different education and training, as
well as the budget allocated to the library and the vision of the management
team makes the difference in the delivery of services.
The
virtual network services of medical libraries, both academic and
hospital-based, have been developed effectively throughout the Spanish
territory during the last decade, nevertheless the financial and managerial independence
of the libraries have discouraged the integration of management and all
their material and human resources -- something that would have been extremely
desirable in these times of budget cuts.
Each
Ministry of Health of the 17 Spanish Regional Administrations has a Virtual Library Portal which includes all
its resources and centralized services and provides online access to all the
staff public Health Centers. The Ministry of Health of the Comunidad de Madrid
also has its own, Biblioteca Virtual
Agencia Lain Entralgo,
inaugurated in 2004 but with some particular characteristics: the consortial
purchase of electronic resources is only partial, the services provided are not
centralized and the library management is independent. These factors, among
others, have favored the implementation of new computer software in some of the
larger hospitals. For example Hospital
Universitario 12 de Octubre, Hospital
Universitario Puerta de Hierro, and also Hospital Universitario La Paz where I develop my
professional activity recently which brought up a new
system to centralize their users’ access to resources and services.
In
general, all the Health Sciences virtual library portals share a list of links
to free and contracted resources, as well as to traditional services:
reference, document delivery, bibliographic searching and continuous training.
Not all the libraries have provided the new shared services of Web 2.0 tools
that allow communication between different types of patrons, and very few have
a team of informationists with the capacity to provide their users with all the
available information for the development of their daily clinical, teaching and
research activities. DeMuro’s editorial recently published
in AAP Library Newsletter on non-traditional roles of librarians is highly
illustrative.
My interest in this topic began in
1997, when I defended my doctoral thesis "Health Sciences Virtual Library". A lot of water has passed under the bridge since
then, but the working hypothesis is still valid: users can access all types of
resources via any Internet platform. Today only difference could be the
addition of the new variables, sharing and interacting. In the 12 European Congress
of Medical Libraries
I had the opportunity to hear the
presentation “The Welch Embedded
Informationist Service Model” given
by Blair Anton
(Associate Director, Clinical Informationist Services, Welch Medical Library), and I found an interesting example of the implementation
of this idea. Therefore, I requested permission for further studies from the
Managing Director of my hospital and I wrote to the Director of the Welch Medical Library asking to observe in situ the Informationist team to learn
about the variety of their work. My immediate goal is to develop a pilot
project “Embedded Informationist-Based Model” in the Internal Medicine Service, whose Head has supported me in carrying out this new line
of research for the Hospital Library.
Unfortunately, my stay at the Welch
Medical Library is nearing the end, but my program has helped me learn in depth
how Welch works, and I’ve had the opportunity to visit the other libraries
located in different campuses that make up Johns Hopkins University.
Obviously, the organization of resources
and services of a private institution such as the Welch Medical Library cannot
be compared to a hospital library of a public Health System because the
hospital library´s budget is significantly lower, the scope is more limited and
finally, and the
audience is more specific. However, I would like to emphasize some of its
relevant features, which should be
common to all libraries: the specialized education in Health Sciences of the
staff, a multidisciplinary team, a good work schedule and overall, a leader of
the library with a strong, clear vision of future with the strength to
implement that vision.
Hopefully, this visit as an observer
will help to promote the participation of Spanish Librarians in some of the
international projects led by Library Institutions around the world and also, to foster communication between informationists so that others can
enjoy an experience as enriching as mine has been.
Maria Luisa Maquedano
Hospital Universitario la Paz
Biblioteca
Virtual de Ciencias de la
E-mail: maquedanoml@gmail.com
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