‘‘ H


AVING rows of shelving full of journal issues is becoming a rare sight, as older material is


increasingly being digitised to allow for electronic access. This is a fairly simple process for large publishers, but what about organisations, such as Health Libraries Group (HLG), who are staffed by volunteers, and who self-produce their own publications?


In 2016, HLG began the task of setting up a digital archive of the print only predecessor publications of HLG Nursing Bulletin1


. Copies of old issues


of Nursing Information Subgroup Newsletter and Libraries for Nursing Bulletin were obtained through appeals on mailing lists and social media. Many libraries and individuals were, at the time, disposing of large print runs, and were happy to send what they had to us. This allowed us to create a sizeable digital collection, which was added to the old CILIP website to form a digital archive, which was added to as more issues became available. However, the archive was fairly primitive, as it consisted of PDF scans of whole issues, which were neither divided into individual articles, nor searchable. Imagine trying to find an article but only being able to browse the spines of journals – this was an easily recognisable problem. The project has been driven by an awareness of the importance of accessibility and preserving past knowledge and experience, so creating a more user-friendly archive that will be sustainable and searchable was important. In 2019, HLG set up a WordPress site with the intention of migrating content onto it2


. The first Covid lockdown


provided an opportunity to get to grips with its features, and showed that it could be used both as a repository3 and a publishing platform4


, . The


flexibility of WordPress as a publishing platform, its ability to store files in a repository, and the ability to have multiple authors and editors made it very attractive as both a current website and an archive.


July-August 2022


The project has been driven by an awareness of the importance of accessibility and preserving past knowledge and experience...


This gave a renewed impetus to move forward and convert the already digitised material into something more accessible, made more so when we received a batch of issues that gave us a complete run from 1991 onwards. Initial experiments, first with individual articles, and then whole issues, showed that it was technically feasible and relatively straightforward to create individual articles on WordPress, either as a downloadable PDF5


or as a webpage that also includes a PDF copy to download6


,


depending on whether the original article was already available as a Word document. With the conclusion of the testing phase, the project moved to the second stage, which required formulating a plan to make available the rest of the digitised content. Volunteers were sought to undertake two roles in the project:


a) converting available full issues into single articles with a corresponding table of contents;


b) uploading the content of each article to WordPress in text and PDF format.


This offered volunteers the opportunity to learn how to create webpages on WordPress, to take part in a project benefiting the wider health library community, and experience of low-cost digitisation done ‘in house’. There was an enthusiastic response. We wanted to ensure that as many people as possible could participate, and that no one was overburdened with this work on top of their day jobs. Each person was assigned to either prepare the articles, or to upload the articles to WordPress; each pair were randomly allocated three years of issues to work on.


Instructions were provided, based on trial and error during the testing phase and trialled by the project leads. SharePoint was used as a tool for collaborative working to host and share files as they were being worked on, before final upload to WordPress, which is open access. In addition, to aid communication and cut down on emails flying back and forth, a Microsoft Teams project group was set


up to facilitate communication, both between the volunteers and project leads, and among the volunteers themselves.


As the first half of the project comes to a close, (digitisation of the HLG Newsletter is planned for later this year), it is important to reflect on what has and hasn’t gone well. An after-action review is planned and the learning will be shared through HLG channels. IP


References 1. Barlow P. Nursing Information Subgroup/Libraries for Nursing Bulletin – Creating an online archive. HLG Nursing Bulletin. 2021 Feb 1;39(3/4):115–8.


2. Health Libraries Group [Internet]. Health Libraries Group. [cited 2022 May 18]. Available from: https://ciliphlg.com/


3. Media Library [Internet]. WordPress.com Support. 2008 [cited 2022 May 18]. Available from: https:// wordpress.com/support/media/


4. Saving and Publishing your WordPress content [Internet]. Easy WP Guide. 2013 [cited 2022 May 18]. Available from: https://bit.ly/3OPmOPQ


5. Haldane, G. Project 2000 in Scotland. Nursing Information Subgroup Newsletter [Internet]. 1991 Mar 1 [cited 2022 May 18];11(1):5–7. Available from: https:// bit.ly/3ywV9ht


6. Farrell, L. Libraries for Nursing 2.0: Fundamental changes to the structure of LfN. Libraries for Nursing Bulletin [Internet]. 2015 Feb 1 [cited 2022 May 18]; 34(3/4):69–72. Available from: https://bit.ly/3Ag0DhO


INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL 17


Phillip Barlow (p.barlow@imperial.ac.uk), Nursing Lead and HLG Nursing Bulletin Editor, Health Libraries Group. NHS Support Librarian, Chelsea and Westminster campus library, Imperial College London.


Rachel Gledhill (rachel.gledhill@ukhsa.gov.uk), Newsletter Editor, Health Libraries Group. Knowledge and Evidence Specialist, UK Health Security Agency.


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