Starting out
I worked in the Current Periodicals Room at Birmingham University Li- brary between University and heading onto a Postgraduate Diploma in Library and Information Studies. I observed Mr Nicholls, the Deputy Librarian, manag- ing by being approachable, walking and talking in the corridors, setting projects that arose out of these conversations. At Birmingham Polytechnic, a fifth of the core programme focused on man- agement, complementing courses on bibliography, cataloguing and indexing, information retrieval, plus libraries and society. Together these gave me a sufficient basis in information science from which to draw, especially in the early years. Equally significantly I met my husband-to-be on the course, and that has made all the difference. I was fortunate to go straight on to join the final year of a British Library funded user education research project at Newcastle Polytechnic, working with inspirational librarians of the day like Daphne Clark who founded CILIP LIRG. Developing tape slide programmes that academic librarians all around the country could customise and use in local workshops, I see that we were using the cutting-edge technol- ogy of the day to introduce undergrads to the literature of their subject and pushing to take wasteful duplication out
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of our ways of working. Next, I joined the staff of The Library Association for three years, as the Pro- fessional Assistant to the late Kate Wood, Education Secretary, a fantastic role model. I learned a lot about workforce development, governance, implementing systems and processes, shaping policy, leading a team, and working with differ- ent stakeholders. It was fascinating, yet I had an itch to roll up my sleeves and run a service. When the opportunity arose in the form of a new and hybrid role as Health Education/Information Officer at Croydon Health Authority, I applied without hesitation. Joining the NHS in December 1982, I immediately knew I had found my niche.
Information for all
I have never forgotten my induction week; the health visitor only took me to houses where there were more, and larger, dogs than children; the district nurse to homes where you really didn’t want to drink a cup of tea, and even less to use the loo. They saved Environmental Health till the Friday... I listened and learned. Setting up a new library for public and commu- nity health teams, I developed the role as an information broker, aiming to make access to the collection and the service as easy as possible. I worked to promote information flows, and to exploit the whole range of information forms and
resources to inform planning, practice, and learning.
It wasn’t long before contacts around the city began sending a trickle of patients who needed information. In response, we launched Croydon Healthline one of the first telephone health information services in the country. In the context of the government’s Don’t Die of Igno- rance campaign about HIV/AIDS, which was both coy and alarming, we brought forward the launch to November 1987. I was learning new skills – fundraising, marketing, engaging with the press. I managed to get BT South-East on board, and they delivered our directory of tapes to every household in Croydon with the telephone bills.
A portfolio career
Moving to Buckinghamshire with a young family in 1990, my career took a quite unexpected turn. I became a Practice Librarian by chance. I was asked to give the local Health Centre some advice on managing their collection of training resources for GP Registrars and was sur- prised to come out with a part-time job. Soon I was working for seven practices – running staff libraries, patients’ libraries, current awareness services, doing health promotion displays. I couldn’t believe how little help primary care staff received from NHS libraries in terms of addressing their
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