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Revalidation IX – a time of change

I took the opportunity of some scheduled focus time with colleagues to complete my 2022 round of CILIP Revalidation for my MCLIP. This was safely despatched in fairly short order reflecting constrained time and the simplified submission requirements with no need to finesse a reflective statement within a word limit.

This was a rather different year. I changed job for the first time in nearly a decade leaving behind a role that had mutated not quite beyond all recognition but significantly and taking on something rather different. The shift to operating at a national level, almost entirely remotely and with a very different role with regards to service management (suddenly an expert in certain library systems) has meant a period of plentiful learning. Much to reflect on.

The move took place in the summer and thankfully I had made a start on tracking my CPD activity before the change as without my diary it proved very hard to reconstruct what I was up to in the last few months of my old job which my brain has done an exemplary job of shredding.

I completed a piece of structured development completing the ITIL 4 Foundation Certification (no post nominals attached sadly). I now know my Service Value System from my Service Value Chain. Previous experience of the benefits of ITIL to a Trust IT Department encouraged me to undertake it and while I found the learning element frustrating (online when others were in the room) and the test annoying (questions that were not in any material I had seen) I have felt it shaping some of my approaches to organising the services I now manage.

Next on the agenda is a good revisit of the PKSB to understand better what I need for my new role. I might even crank the Fellowship machine back up again.

Tune for the year is my most listened for 2022 – might need to go back to MJ Hibbett and the Revalidators for the tenth cycle of Revalidation next year (not least as he recently deposited his record of 1000 gigs with a proper DoI and everything).

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3 years of hilj.club

Time flies when you are having fun (and also sometimes when you aren’t).

A long time ago I had an idea for a way to make reading journal articles from HILJ more rewarding by encouraging discussion. You can read the back story up to the launch of hilj.club in an editorial I coauthored with Tom Roper (his blog still a good place to find him in retirement) or you can get a feel via the About page.

So – how has it gone?

Since the launch of the hilj.club website in August 2019 there have been some fairly distracting times (cough) which broke up the planned regular schedule of quarterly posts. Ignoring the hiatus from June 2020 to June 2021 we mostly got posts out. A total of 11 articles have been featured since the site was launched (following pilot posts on other platforms / venues) with a range of authors each bringing their own feel to proceedings. Most followed a reflective format but we also had a dialogue style post on a KM related article. Some tough questions have been set by the authors – not all of which got answered.

How are the numbers?

Not terrible – the web stats have risen pretty steadily (if you believe web stats). Interaction wise the idea was that people would comment on the posts or elsewhere if it suited them. Comments have never been huge and the last few posts have notably not drawn so many – perhaps a sign of the times. There is definitely evidence of impact in the downloaded article stats that are provided to the HILJ Editorial Advisory Board with a lift to articles that are featured in #HILJClub.

Is it worth it?

From my perspective #HILJClub is pretty low maintenance. I like writing the odd post and reading articles I might not otherwise off the back of peoples selections. The small team involved has stayed pretty small and chips in where they can. Authors have all had a nice little piece of CPD to log while frequently scratching an interest itch. At various times the posts have sparked debate, people have had local journal clubs off the back of them and some wrote blogposts in response to things that took their fancy. All this feels like a decent cost / benefit balance. The good news is that a number of posts are already assigned to authors so there should be another year of #HILJClub fun to follow.

Curious as to what people think might make it better / more interactive / worth their time? Answers in the comments box please (or on twitter!)

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Upping the value of CILIP Revalidation

A mere month ago I blogged about my latest CILIP revalidation after a covid induced hiatus.

My experience was that revalidation submissions normally disappear into the ether for a while before you get something back saying “well done” and offering a few ideas of things to consider doing in the coming year. My 2020 submission I just got “well done and let us know if you want feedback”. Why would I not want the feedback? So I duly asked and got some interesting pointers in return.

This year I quickly received a reponse “delighted” with my submission and confirming all was well. I thought I would ask again if there was any feedback. Sadly this time there is not – not least because it had not been reviewed. Eh? Not reviewed? The position now (and for a little while) has been that only 5% of submissions will be reviewed. This is down to a rising number of submissions (good news) and the time it would take to review them all (bad news). The challenge this presents for me is that on a 5% basis I might only expect to have my submissions reviewed every 20 years. So that could be once a career even for folk less ancient than myself!

Recognising the capacity challenge of having them reviewed by a, doubtless, small group (and, if I am honest, the low impact of the feedback I received) what could we imagine that would make better use of this opportunity? To clarify first – the process of completing revalidation is a worthwhile one regardless. Looking back across a period, having a record of some of the stuff you got up to and considering how you went on and used things is “good stuff”. But how to improve?

The idea I put forward to CILIP was for them to facilitate a Randomised Coffee Trial type arrangement. It might look a little like this:

  • Revalidators agree to be paired with someone submitting from another sector (same sector might be a bit too close to home)
  • Submissions are exchanged and read over (CILIP can still sample 5% for whatever the full review looks like)
  • Participants meet – likely online but in person if handy / agreeable – and have a discussion about what the other person made of their CPD and plans

There could be real benefits in getting some fresh external input, meeting people outside your network and hearing more about how they work / consider their development. It would not cost very much at all and would increase the personal value people would already have achieved through their submission. I would be surprised if anyone is revealing any state secrets in their submissions but light redaction could take place before exchange.

Curious as to whether this would appeal to anyone else? Or if others have bright ideas in this area?

Obligatory MJ Hibbett & the Validators song – only one I found that mentions coffee!
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Revalidation VIII – woah boy

Remember February 2020? When I last posted to this blog? I think we can safely say plans got a little disrupted after that. Accordingly I am not going to hold my feet to the flames for a lack of progress on the elusive FCLIP. Nor am I going to criticise myself for taking a year off the revalidation loop.

It was good to conduct some CPD archeology on my diary to look at what I got up to inbetween Teams meetings and washing my hands over the past two years. Like many people Covid was the hot date in my diary but this proved particularly the case as I was responsible for reopening the physical libraries after a closed period across the whoe university back at the start of time (March 2020). This was a huge challenge. In hindsite it had the benefit of requiring absolute focus on a single very clear aim which is something that can be hard to find in the regular hurly burly of work.

I did a lot of learning around questions of antiracism and inequality in the workplace with a LibraryJuice course an intense but rewarding option.

The barrage of Teams meetings left me reluctant to go to some of the conferences I might usually have enjoyed due to their revised online formats. I spoke at RLUK 2021 (delayed from March 2020 ahem) – a lightning talk on Working in partnership in Sierra Leone. This was a dispiriting experience with zero visual feedback leaving me feeling I might as well have been muttering to myself. I enjoyed some of the talks but without being there it was ultimately a disappointment – certainly no substitute for a trip to the Wellcome or Edinburgh.

I enjoyed writing an article of sorts for HILJ in memory of Shane Godbolt – “‘Moving Forward’: how health librarians can continue supporting the legacy of Shane Godbolt“. A reminder to us all of the power of networking, professional development and of how we all gain by helping others.

Hilj.club had a tough 2020 grinding to a halt under the pressure of Covid and only resuming a year later. For all that it picked up views and readers in 2020 and saw pleasing growth in 2021. I remain a little unsure if the format works. Perhaps people are just over commenting on blogs? In any case – I think it is a valuable little contribution and worth the URL fee / a bit of time.

Also on my plate has been the design of a new library for one of the hospital campuses – the enjoyment of laying things out and devising what promises to be a compact but desirable space somewhat under mined by the many meetings considering risks.

While I was looking the other way CILIP updated the Revalidation process with a new template to work to. It feels a shame to me that the previously required brief reflective statement has gone – there really is reason for people to not complete this annual review exercise now this slightly tricky element has been excised.

So what did I learn in the (ongoing) covid nightmare? We can achieve things we thought impossible – and quite quickly. That thing about self compassion and not being able to pour from an empty cup really is true. I like being mobile during my day. I love working in central London. People are more irrational than I want to acknowledge. Good bread is an investment worth making. Virtual meetings are less fun than real ones. You can reduce the extent to which Teams bugs you. I should have joined a running club years ago – AKA make time for the things you really want to do. That’ll do for today.

I normally add an MJ Hibbett and the Validators song on the end of these posts but in honour of it dominating my playlist you can have a bit of Nation of Language instead.

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Revalidation VII – more stuff – still no FCLIP

Here we are again – another year older and still Revalidating rather than finishing my FCLIP off.

Efforts on that front were derailed by some fairly hefty restructuring at work (all be it with very positive outcomes that I will need to reflect on here sometime).  I probably spent rather too much time on new fun bits of development also which tends to get in the way of the formal reflecting / writing up side.

Despite the frustration caused by needing to haul the info from my previous Revalidations out of the old CILIP VLE I have to say the new submission process is an improvement.  The form was fine to use and will be handy for future reference.

Highlights of the year include

  • Setting up the new #HILJClub website and seeing participation pick up
  • Writing an editorial for HILJ on #HILJClub with Tom
  • Speaking at UHMLG on messing up
  • Hearing Prof Maria Musoke speak at the celebration of her honorary FCLIP (love a bit of Ranganathan)
  • Speaking up for public libraries at my District Council cabinet
  • Delivering a HINARI workshop with a Research4Life grant in Sierra Leone (badly need to blog this one – speaking on it next month at RLUK Conference!)

I have a new mentor for FCLIP and a new target.  I think this is going to be the year…

Mandatory MJ Hibbett and the Validators

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On failure and a successful #UHMLG19

pacer

Clickety clack

To Teeside in a pacer for the UHMLG Summer Conference themed around “Failing to succeed”.  The UHMLG summer conference is a bit different – quite small and definitely perfectly formed it has more of a workshop feel than most (NB – I am on the UHMLG committee).  This edition was no exception with a first afternoon workshop followed by a mix of sessions on the second day and a manageable sized attendance.  The glorious sunshine in Middlesbrough was a treat and the venues were convenient.

After a quick carb up lunch (pizza and wedges FTW) we spent a useful afternoon thinking about failure led by Andy Priestner.  Recognising that failure is valuable learning and a part of life we thought about how we might better set cultures that enabled having something fail not become something that feels like it has to be hidden.  The session drew on Andy’s and our own experiences of different forms of failure. There were lessons from his work in UX where failing quickly and cheaply allows for rapid progress of ideas.  Libraries are small c conservative institutions as a rule and this can make accepting failure hard. I liked the warning against “caretaker management” – just keeping things ticking along rather than seeking to match or provoke the progress the people we work with need.  Andy was happy that no one was going to die due to things we had done which provoked discussion around the genuine anxiety the potential for patient death can cause in some around health information work. In the end we are not the ones that make the clinical decision!  Something to follow up was the “How to fail” podcast that a number of people had enjoyed.  It was a great presentation with useful sharing exercises.

I found the next section of the workshop worked less well for me.  I think this was as I had already used the ideation techniques Andy took us through in other contexts and didn’t find they sat quite right with the question we were tackling.  We did have useful conversations around how we might better support a positive culture around when things we try don’t come off.

A take away was that your perceived failure may be viewed as a success by others. I would suggest this is more the case than the opposite given the difficulty most of us experience with self compassion.

cloughie

Cloughie!

After a happy, chatty social evening meal it was great to have a #Libraruns morning outing with Tom, Eli and Brian Clough.

The first two lead a session on Imposter Syndrome something I suspect old big head would not have suffered from.

I freely admit to being a bit dubious of the rise of this as a condition.  I was certainly an outlier in not recognising it in myself in any recent times.  On reflection I put this down to a combination of things. Firstly I am in a fairly sweet spot professionally – I have been around for a fair while and feel ok that I know what I am talking about – I am in a good job for me.  Secondly I am a privileged person – as a white man things are generally easier for me and library land is a space where there are few questions about my presence (the days of being told I am awfully young for a library manager are some way behind me).  Finally I suspect that where I am flailing out of my depth I am OK with this just being somewhere I need to learn things rather than it being down to me being an interloper (or it could be that I am a sociopath).

Conversely my being in a minority on imposter syndrome means I need to be rather more sensitive to it than I am.  Clearly this is a significant issue for many people and the discussion of tactics to address it was useful for me to think about how I approach colleagues who may experience this acutely.

I delivered a lightning talk on how a LibUX experiment blew up in my face

Key learning here – check the politics and talk to more people.  Probably always good advice!

After some other bits the final speaker was Olivia Remes on How to cope with anxiety and bounce back in life. You can get a good feel for this session by watching her TEDTalk.  After a run through of some of the forms of anxiety (clinically speaking) and some of the causes she ran through ways to cope / coping strategies. Self compassion is a good place to start and a number of the strategies related to this.  An idea I had not met before and liked was “Wait to worry” – essentially you book a time to worry about a specific thing rather than have it sitting on you the whole time.  I could see this being very effective to park an issue and prevent it escalating in your mind.

transporter

I had a bit of time to kill before my (failure of a) train home so went for a wander round Middlesbrough – I can recommend a look at the transporter bridge, the “Middlesbrough Collection, Why Are We Here? With Black Artists & Modernism” and a cold drink at the station on another scorching day in the North East.

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HILJClub – Novel insights into views towards H1N1 during the 2009 Pandemic: a thematic analysis of twitter data

This edition of HILJ Club has been prepared by:

Catherine McLaren. LKS Development Manager; Library & Knowledge Services and Technology Enhanced Learning, HEE Midlands and East. @cmmclaren

HILJ Club is a intended as a simple way for people to do a bit of CPD by engaging with articles published in HILJ.  HILJ is the journal of the Health Libraries Group of CILIP and all members have access.  Working with Wiley we should be able to open articles up to all for a month around the discussion.  The article selected this time is Open Access which makes this simpler.

The plan remains to pick an article to be discussed from each issue of HILJ. The organising group (Alan Fricker, Catherine McLaren, Morag Clarkson, Lisa Burscheidt, Tom Roper) have picked articles thus far but in future people would be welcome to volunteer to host.  At present articles are hosted on peoples blogs but we may set up a platform at some point.  Generally the host will offer some questions as prompts and then the discussion can go where interest takes it.

Over to Catherine…

#HILJClub, CPD for library staff, especially those interested in health. This time around I got to choose the article we are looking at.

Ahmen, W., Bath, P. A., Sbaffi, L and Demartin, G. (2019) Novel insights into views towards H1N1 during the 2009 Pandemic: a thematic analysis of twitter data. Health Info Libr J, 36: 60-72. doi:10.1111/hir.12247

Background

Infectious disease outbreaks have the potential to cause a high number of fatalities and are a very serious public health risk.

Objectives

Our aim was to utilise an indepth method to study a period of time where the H1N1 Pandemic of 2009 was at its peak.

Methods

A data set of n = 214 784 tweets was retrieved and filtered, and the method of thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

Results

Eight key themes emerged from the analysis of data: emotion and feeling, health related information, general commentary and resources, media and health organisations, politics, country of origin, food, and humour and/or sarcasm.

Discussion

A major novel finding was that due to the name ‘swine flu’, Twitter users had the belief that pigs and pork could host and/or transmit the virus. Our paper also considered the methodological implications for the wider field of library and information science as well as specific implications for health information and library workers.

Conclusion

Novel insights were derived on how users communicate about disease outbreaks on social media platforms. Our study also provides an innovative methodological contribution because it was found that by utilising an indepth method it was possible to extract greater insight into user communication.

Questions

What? What do you think of this article? What do you think of the research methods? Is there something else that you would have liked to have seen included in the article?

So what? Does this article encourage you to use twitter as the bases for research? Do you think this method could or should be used to research other areas of the profession?

Now what? What areas of the profession would you be interested in researching in a similar way? Will you change your practice as a result of reading this article? If so, how? If not, why not?

 

This article came to my attention because over the last year library and knowledge service staff within the NHS in England have been introduced to health literacy. How they can support NHS staff understand and use health literacy to support the public. So that the public’s health decisions are health literate. The health literacy challenge is already large and anything the brings stress, fear or anxiety to a person reduces their health literacy. How much more so would this be in a large international public health emergency like Swine Flu or Ebola. The writers acknowledge that twitter can be useful in this area; ‘This is because common misunderstandings and key questions relating to health can be rapidly identified and correct information can be consequently disseminated’.

Let’s focus on the questions.

What?

This article interested me for a number of reasons including that Twitter is a social media tool that a lot of library staff use. It is used both personally and professionally but are we aware of how it can be used as a research tool? This article looks at ‘data driven qualitative insights into tweets relating to’ an event of international importance; in this case infectious disease outbreaks and particularly the 2009 Swine flu outbreak.

The article suggests ‘that the methodology applied in this study can be adapted for the analysis of discussions surrounding libraries as well as the profession as a whole’.  Therefore, it is important to judge how robust this methodology is and how and when it might be reproduced in other parts of the profession.

The research question asked within the article was “What type of information was shared on Twitter during the peak of the 2009 swine Flu Pandemic?”

What comes to mind is how do you define the peak of the 2009 Flu Pandemic. The authors defined it as April 28th and 29th 2009 and that Google Trends showed the highest peak during this period of time. UK government data does not support this, instead showing the week beginning June 15th 2009 as being the peak. Figure 1, Health Protection Agency, UK (2010) Epidemiological report of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in the UK. Available at: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140713172844/http://www.hpa.org.uk/Publications/InfectiousDiseases/Influenza/1010EpidemiologicalreportofpandemicH1N12009inUK/ [Accessed 29/5/2019].

Data from Australia also doesn’t support the idea that the end of April 2009 was the peak of the pandemic, Figure 4 puts it at the middle to end of July 2009.  Department of Health, AU (2010) Annual Report of the National Influenza Surveillance Scheme, 2009. Available at: https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cdi4104-j [Accessed 29/5/2019].

The World Health Organisation declared a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on 25th April 2009. WHO (2010) Evolution of a Pandemic A(N1N1) 2009, April 2009 – August 2010. Available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/78414/9789241503051_eng.pdf;jsessionid=FC3A8C2A60656D1C3597D76F02F03173?sequence=1 [Accessed 29/5/2019] and a phrase 5 pandemic (wide spread human infection) on 29th April 2009. This maybe why the dates in April where chosen as being the height of the outbreak, as this was when it was high in people minds and online google searches were being done, but it was not the clinical peak of the outbreak as shown by UK, Australian or WHO government surveillance data.

The original number of tweets under review were 214,784 and it was reasonable to filter down these tweets first by removing identical tweets and then near identical tweets at a 60% threshold. After this a 10% sample of the remaining tweets were taken (n=7679).

Eight themes across the study emerge from the two days of data. These were than used along with Twitter’s advance search feature to see if the themes were present across the outbreak of January 2009 to November 2009.

Going forward it would be interesting to see if the themes highlighted in the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak also goes across other worldwide health emergencies such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak (or other national health emergencies). It would also be interesting to see where the interest in an outbreak appears to peak on Twitter or google compared to clinical data around a disease peak. How this data might then be used by governments and health organisations to disseminate information to a worried public would also be of interest.

So What?

This article does highlight to me how twitter and possible other social media platforms can be used to research public perceptions. Linked into concerns around fake news it is important for library staff to understand the positive and negative issues of social media and that research can give us insights into how it is used on an international and more local level. I could see how this type of research could be used to investigate other parts of the profession and especially how it might work for areas within health librarianship. What would have been helpful is a more detailed methods section, but I think there is enough information to give a way forward.

Now What?

I think the work around health literacy within the NHS in England may well be an interesting area to undertake this type of research. Finding out how library staff are reacting to this work, also interested organisations and how members of the public are also interacting with this work. Pulling out the themes of these interactions would allow for more nuanced support as the work goes forward. Taking this research forward would rely on support from the centre around funding and specialist skills which may well be limited in the short term but might be more possible in the medium to long term. We will just have to wait and see.

Catherine McLaren. LKS Development Manager; Library & Knowledge Services and Technology Enhanced Learning, HEE Midlands and East. @cmmclaren

Comments are open!

 

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Journal clubbing – beyond saints, spies and salespeople

I had been planning to read this article on analogies for liaison roles since it came out so was pleased it was selected for my work journal club

BEYOND SAINTS, SPIES AND SALESPEOPLE: NEW ANALOGIES FOR LIBRARY LIAISON PROGRAMMES – Peter Barr and Anthea Tucker – In the Library with the Lead Pipe 19 Sep 2018

Working in a functionally aligned service it is always interesting to see how others experiences tally with ours.  Locally we have also done a great deal of work around things like Customer Service Excellence so debates around the language of the market in HE are ones we have thought about a fair bit (to the point where I spoke at an event we organised on the student as customer).  We had common experiences with the authors about needing to explain a new role within a functional model and the difficulty other departments could have in understanding this.  Looking at the website for their service it seems they retained some aspects of the traditional subject liaison role that I am not sure this was significant.  In contrast to the authors experience we did not experience a drawing away from the other functional teams.  While it has not always been easy there has been concerted work to bring teams closer together with part of the role locally specifically focussed on liaison internal to the service.

The article considers a range of analogies that have been used to help explain the role of liaison staff and suggests some other possibilities.  It was interesting to see how comfortable people were with these or not and we considered a few alternatives (the fixer perhaps).  I liked the idea of selling being not just about commercial imperatives but also “to convince of the worth of” this tallies with the strong thrust around impact and advocacy in NHS libraries.  There was a somewhat adversarial position taken that viewed sales as purely negative when there is scope for us to work with suppliers in more positive ways – they have things we want to buy and an interest in developing the use of resources (I recognise not all relationships will be positive).

I was glad the article came down ultimately to building and presenting our professional identity as librarians.  We can learn a great deal from the way other people go about their work but we should be strong in our own professional base.

 

 

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Revalidation VI – making a push

A new record for making my MCLIP revalidation submission early in the year.  Why the haste to reflect on 2018?  My experience over the past few years is that the sooner it is done then the more straightforward it is to remember what happened.

The other driver is that last year I promised an FCLIP submission for 2018. This has not come to pass (yet) but has resulted in me being that bit more organised with my logging and reflecting throughout the year.  One last push this time so I can report on how Fellowship went rather than making excuses this time next year!

I have had lots of interesting experiences over the course of the past year including continuing to push the joy of metrics (and annual action plans) at EAHIL and UHMLG.  I got tangled up in the national procurement for NHS databases and conversations around a potential discovery tool.  There was more UX fun at work and some less fun organisational shenanigans.

Brilliant was managing to link my support for health libraries in Africa to the goals of my service which has seen me help organise a stakeholder day for the fantastic folks at African Hospital Libraries, raise a few quid for them (donations welcome till 8/3/2019) and make a bid for Research4life funds to run some HINARI training in Sierra Leone (bid result awaited!).

A good year as M J Hibbett & the Validators reflect on their classic “We Validate” album track “Mental Judo” – “I’m going to enjoy it for what it is – Not for what it isn’t”

 

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The NLH Enterprise Architecture – looking to the future

For a couple of years now I have had a copy of “An Enterprise Architecture for the National Library for Health: Direction of travel and deliverables” sat in my inbox.  At the time I was preparing a report considering HDAS (the NHS in England interface for searching literature databases) and I wanted to remind myself of the content of this dimly remembered document.  Linda Ferguson kindly dug it out (on a site since dead) and it has been sat nagging me ever since.

The version of the EA above dates from 2006.  I confess I failed to grasp the scope of the vision it represented at the time.  The language is by nature technical but the ambition is very clear.  A number of initiatives now under way in the NHS in England could be plucked directly from this document and would certainly be much easier to deliver if we had gone further down some of the paths it suggests.

The document lays out a plan for delivery of NHS Library web based services.  At the core is the need for “a set of interoperable, networked services that conform to appropriate open standards”.  This would be supported by various things such as shared schemas for meta data and a central registry for API specifications.

I want to consider how the implications anticipated at the time have worked out and where things might be going in the future.

There were several implications identified for national services

 

A coherent and integrated user journey is desired. Presentation layers, what the user sees as a web page and how results are presented, will be separate from content and services and owned and built by the NHS.

Procurement will focus on content and the necessary APIs to integrate content into the discovery and current awareness processes. Increasingly, we do not wish to purchase content locked into any single portal.

A core search service will index all NHS content. It too will have a SOA, providing the basis for search pages. It will integrate with related services such as link resolvers

An NHS resolver service will be a key component in the delivery process. The NHS will wish to procure and own a resolver solution as a managed service.

An NHS library– wide Access Management System is being procured. Use of this system will be mandated for information suppliers. It will be SAML compliant.

Much of this has come to pass though perhaps without the core search service.

HDAS has reasonably successfully allowed for changes to the suppliers of content (databases) without massively impacting the experience of searching for the end user.  The varying API offered by suppliers have not fully supported the consistent search experience desired and there have been performance issues.  What has not happened perhaps is the ongoing integration of other services such as document supply and support at the point of need into HDAS.

We have seen the procurement and integration into HDAS of different link resolving solutions.  OpenAthens has been a long standing partner for access management.

Looking to the future work is underway to deliver an NHS England wide discovery solution and how well this maintains control over the web page and presentation of results will be interesting.  This could potentially be the “core search service”?  NHS Evidence already does this job for some categories of materials but stays away from the literature databases that would swamp the materials it aims to present.

A missed opportunity was the investment to create an NHS England wide Library Management System based in one of the Open Source solutions.  A small central team could have administered and developed a tailored approach that would have matched some of the ambititions of the EA.  I suspect the overall cost over the past decade would have been significantly lower and the opportunities for creating a platform for services greater.

There were also implications flagged for local services

local e-content, whether procured or NHS generated can, by adhering to EA principles, be integrated with national content, either within NLH or within other portals.

New services can be built up around this technology. For example, local current awareness and alerting services can be integrated with national services to provide the user with one way of getting knowledge updates

A single NHS library-wide Access Management System provides web Single Sign-on linking library services to their user base and will provide a bridge to NHS SSO services, opening up library service to non-library users.

Generally we have been happily plugging in locally procured content into national systems.  A gap has been around a solution for ebooks and this will need to be addressed in any new discovery layer as this format grows in importance.  The ability to integrate local content will depend on standards and considering these might be an early priority (as fixing them later will be trickier).

Recent revisions to HLISD will hopefully have maintained the commitment to the important location and service information being available via API to build other service offers.  The wide adoption of KnowledgeShare raises questions of how this (or an equivalent) might be integrated into a future national digital service.

In an ideal world we would have single sign on using peoples Trust logins – any additional login (even one as familiar as OpenAthens) is an unwanted barrier so an NHS SSO is the right ultimate target.

So quite a lot progressed and quite a lot left to do.  As the NHS in England moves towards the procurement of a new discovery tool it feels to me more critical than ever that we maintain the drive of the NLH Enterprise Architecture for the delivery of “a set of interoperable, networked services that conform to appropriate open standards”.  What I would like to see more of is the role of the person supporting at the point of need within that networked service.

These are my views based on my involvement with various aspects of the health libraries system at different points.  I am very happy to be corrected on points of accuracy – and challenged on matters of opinion!