Now Sherwood Forest Hospitals, Sutton-In-Ashfield, has its own pop up staff library service visiting the wards and departments.
"It's all about ensuring our staff have the most up-to-date information to provide the best patient care" says Heather Gardner,Library Manager. "People told us it was often difficult to cross the hospital site and get to the library after they had done a full shift or in their breaks.So we decided to take the library to them"
Librarians work with the hospital's Practice Development team-who provide cover on the ward to ensure patient care is unaffected during the visit-to make the service a success.
The pop up proved really popular in just its first few outings.There has been an increase in sign ups for library memberships including student nurses.
"The library bring a range of books,jourmals and other information according to the ward speciality" explains Alison Davidson,Practice Development Matron. "It's making resources easily available and people are responding really well to it. For nursing in particular,we believe this new approach will make a huge difference in self-directed study,and for CPD evidence for revalidation"
The mobile library is going out to the wards twice a month. Staff who browse the shelves can also discuss their information needs with librarians. If they can't find what they need,the librarians can search for information to meet their needs from one of the fulltext online collections or can order articles from external library resources such as the BMA and the British Library.
Staff can also explore the range of online resources in the library and gain confidence in accessing them with the help of a librarian. Patients and relatives have also been supported when requesting information including being taken for a visit to the library and shown the range of Dementia resources available. Contact [email protected] or [email protected]