“Our aim is to deliver the long-term benefits of shared LMS for service users, library staff and organisations, whilst minimising the short-term disruption. There has been lots of useful learning along the way – for us, for library teams, and for the system suppliers.” Finally, user discovery research high- lights the significance of ‘grey literature’ in health and care. Repositories can be integrated into the Knowledge Hub, capturing and managing grey literature, but there are many challenges to making it easily discoverable, so the team will be looking for suppliers who might help with innovative, cost-effective and sus- tainable ways to do this.
Suppliers rising to the challenge Helen recognises the challenge that the NHS in England presents to discovery
system suppliers who more typically work with academic libraries, or LMS suppliers who more typically work with public libraries.
“Content pricing and licensing models which may work well for other sectors tend not to work well for us because lev- els and patterns of usage are so variable,” Helen says. “Time-pressured healthcare staff are likely to use resources infre- quently, and of course specialist resourc- es are only relevant to a small proportion of the workforce.
“We’re seeing a decrease in the use of subscription resources and a nota- ble increase in the use of open access resources. But when resources are required, they are required quickly – and limits to interoperability between dif- ferent suppliers’ platforms and content, combined with variation in the quality
of metadata and the extent it is shared, often manifest in blocked user journeys and a poor user experience.”
Good partnerships “Some suppliers have an interesting perception about the funding available in the NHS and we’ve received eye-watering quotes over the years. Others want to sell us the bells and whistles of their product platforms – but NHS staff want fewer places to look, not more, and it’s the high-quality content they value, not the wrapping.” Helen says: “We are very fortunate to enjoy good partnerships with those sup- pliers who have been willing to take on the challenge of working with us. The members of teams who work with us deserve special industry awards for ingenuity, creativity and perseverance!” BG
13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
