These come a little after the event, but my vision of blogging between sessions a la MLA was thwarted by the non-availability of network connections and by the nature of the programme, which, with two session spread over an afternoon and a morning, didn’t offer as much time between. As for York, the campus is pretty, though infested with ducks and geese, and the accommodation spare, though not as primitive as Sussex’s East Slope where I spent three hellish weeks last summer. But no wireless access in the study-bedrooms, or indeed anywhere else as far as I could see.
To the programme: the major theme was relations between higher education and the National Health Service (NHS).
Steve Rose of Oxford University Health Care Libraries spoke on contracting to provide services to the NHS. Steve advocated a more thorough approach than the “here’s the services, take it or leave it” attitude of some higher education libraries supplying services to the NHS. Particularly in the rapidly changing world of the NHS, one needs to be able to demonstrate the advantage the NHS will gain from buying ones services, and ensure that services are developed to fit their needs ands strategies. Among the initiatives he highlighted was their lunchtime information on a plate session. They’re now renegotiating contracts for April 2005.
John van Loo reported on the SCONUL ACHS (Advisory Committee on Health Services) survey of contracts between HE libraries and the NHS, carried out in 2003. Some of the more alarming things he found were that a lot of librarians were not involved in contract negotiation at all, and some had no idea of the value of contracts. John said that many pieces of the contracting jigsaw were still missing. There is currently a review of the MPET levy which funds education and training for almost all health professionals apart from doctors (though there were rumours that the review might have been stopped, after they had “looked into the abyss”). John also pointed us to the Joint Costing and Pricing Steering Group’s transparent approach to costing. John stressed that we should share information about contracts
In discussion the news that SCONUL ACHS had been disbanded broke, and delegates wondered how to influence the new “high-level strategic” body that will replace it, and what would happen to the unfinished work of SCONUL ACHS
Bev Chapman of the Whittington Hospital in North London (where both my children were born) spoke of her experience of the HelLicon accreditation process. She confirmed that it’s a very time-consuming process, the obvious benefits of an accreditation badge notwithstanding. It appears that the London medical school libraries are about to undertake this; I wonder if tit will spread. One strategy might be to develop a Helicon-lite accreditation that both reduces the huge administrative load and also can be more easily adapted to the higher education world (and fit with the other QA processes we have to undergo)
After tea, there were three product presentations, Nigel Robinson (an old chum form my animal health days, Sometime secretary of the Animal Health Information Specialists (UK & Ireland) Group) on BIOSIS. BIOSIS are now owned by Thomson, Kate Light from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination gave a useful and illuminating introduction to their services (must include some of her features in studentcentral) and Donald McKay of BIOME who told us of some of the developments in this gateway and in the Resource Discovery Network generally. Among the interesting things here is how subject portals might interface with learning environments.
Next came the AGM, where we failed to elect a committee, but much more importantly discussed the future of the organisation, our relationship with UHSL and with SCONUL. I shan't usurp the function of the minute taker, but will simply throw in my view, which is that now is the time to build a new, unified and broad-based organisation health librarians in higher education, drawing on the best traditions of predecessors, but at the same time “a party of a new type”. I’m going to write up my ideas and will post them here, as well as circulating to my UMSLG colleagues. But it was apparent in discussions about the MPET review, and contracting, and again in presentations on inter-professional education, that it makes sound sense for us to combine with colleagues to provide one v voice for higher education librarians serving health.
In the second session on the Friday morning William Jones of UEA, speaking under the title, discussed their development of a portal using SFX.
I then spoke, over which its probably best to draw a veil, but I previously posted the presentation to this blog; this continued what seems to have become a BSMS tradition of having a presence on the UMLG programme, as at last year’s conference I spoke on studentcentral, our electronic leaning environment and two years ago, when we met in Hove, Jon Cohen gave the keynote speech. Debra Morris of Southampton then presented their collaboration with Portsmouth on inter-professional learning, which I had also heard discussed at the March forum on information literacy by her Portsmouth colleague Roisin Gwyer. A fascinating paper and initiative and she invited us all to view it at:
Paul Hollands of LTSN-01 spoke on some of their developments, including interoperability between LTSN-01 and the Resource Discovery network, adding education metadata to resource catalogued in BIOME for example, the ACETS project for reusable learning objects in health education and METRO/ He also discussed RSS feeds, far more comprehensively than I had been able to in my presentation, including the battles between RSS 0.9, 1.0 and 2.0 and the controversies surrounding what it stands for (Paul said he had isolated nine variants, three times as many as I had spotted) and how to embed them in learning environments
After coffee we heard Phil Candy on the NHS University (NHSU) who gave a wide-ranging presentation on NHSU’s plans, their cunning matrix structure their plans for an electronic learning environment
Ben Toth presented on the National Library for Health. In it, Ben described how progress was being made towards a launch. A series of road shows are to be held around the country this month (indeed we’re hosting one on 21st July at BSMS).
He said that things had moved on since the TFPL report, which identified as weakness the fragmentation of local serviced, a lack of coordination between local and national levels and a lack of workforce capacity and skills.
NLH will address the challenges of support5ing users wherever and whenever, spending the £35 million the NHS invests in libraries effectively, supporting library staff and tackling the complex strategic and operational issues that face the service.
General principles that will underlie the new service are that the network is the library, that some things will be done just once rather than many times, without overbearing centralisation, that there will be closer integration of the local and national, and that procurement. Phase 0 lasts until October 2004, with a launch in November and is when the vision is articulated, in phase 1 from November 2004 onward there’ll be baseline financial and user surveys, the former trying got map some of the flows of money between HE and the NHS , with movement on sharing resources, procurement, single sign-on, service level agreements and the MPET review. In questions Ben was asked about a National Service Framework for NHS libraries, though it wasn’t quite clear to me what the relationship between this and the Helicon accreditation scheme might be.
And the tensions between the trend towards disintermediation and the development of new value added services which could be highly mediated
Finally Laura Tucker presented on the map of Medicine project, She was against the clock, and had to compress her presentation, but I look forward to seeing it demonstrated at the NeLH roadshows.
