NHS librarians speak out about information access

 Healthcare librarians have said that they need to allow people ease of access to information and portability of knowledge without them needing extensive IT skills, according to a telephone survey undertaken by knowledge management software developer Softlink.

NHS library workers said that, if they had unlimited funds, they would try to allow clinicians access to information from anywhere, and "avoid reliance on high levels of IT knowledge as it excludes people."

For the NHS library system to be robust in the future, it should be possible to access information 24/7 over the web, they said.

Iain Dunbar, director of Softlink Europe, said: "We were keen to cut through the jargon to find out what people’s individual definitions were through Delphi-style questioning of an array of expert practitioners from the library field.

"Ensuring that library and information services are well-supported by managers and users is also something that we feel strongly about and which we support through our ongoing research and development of our product service. Ensuring librarians to find accurate information quickly and easily is essential to the future of the service.

According to the survey, which also covered librarians in the charity and legal sector, healthcare librarians were more likely to have library qualifications. They also unanimously said that library users valued the services they provide.

Key trends in the future included greater use of RSS feeds, cross-domain searching, open access publishing and dealing with duplicate information and "information overload".

A full copy of the survey can be obtained from Softlink Europe’s site.