IN DEPTH
Lucy Gilham, Knowledge Specialist at Hampshire Hospitals Library Service.
lucy.gilham@
hhft.nhs.uk
A Toolkit for Sustainable Procurement in NHS Libraries
As one of the biggest employers in the world, with more than 1.7 million staff and massive infrastructure, decisions made by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) can have huge impacts. In recent years its focus has included sustainability, and here Lucy Gilham, Knowledge Specialist at Hampshire Hospitals Library Service, explains how her service supports evidence-led sustainability.
MY introduction to sustainability in health- care came not long after I joined Hampshire Healthcare Library Service as Knowledge Specialist in 2019. I was fortunate to meet the NHS Trust’s Sustainability Manager (who was already a library fan) and that meeting started a conversation that has brought me here. It gave me the opportunity to raise awareness on how the library service could support hos- pital staff doing sustainability projects. The first thing that I did was to start a Sustainability in Healthcare current awareness bulletin, which initially distributed internally and to a few other interested librarians. Four years on and the bulletin is sent out monthly to a large number of people throughout the UK.
Our library service provides support by searching the evidence base to find research and case studies relating to the area of interest. The Greener NHS Knowledge Hub is a great way to find out what is going on within other UK hospitals with regards to sustainability work. The NHS staff and students also have access to a collection of print books relating to sustainability in healthcare along with national provision of 27 ebook titles.
Naturally, this led to wanting to make our libraries more sustainable and since 2022 I have been co-Chair of the Sustainability in NHS Knowledge and Library Services Community of Practice, along with my NHS Library colleague Adam Tocock who is also the Sustainability representative on the board of CILIP’s Health Libraries Group.
38 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
The Community of Practice has grown significantly, with the membership also including non-library NHS staff and members from other library sectors. Relationships that we have built up through the group are extremely valuable and have allowed us all to learn from one another.
Our Knowledge for Healthcare strategy acknowl- edges that we, as Knowledge and Library services can contribute to the Greener NHS Programme.
“Knowledge specialists have a dual role in con- tributing to the sustainability agenda, within the knowledge service itself and by providing the evidence to underpin policy, commissioning, opera- tional practice and training.”
– Knowledge for Healthcare Strategy 2021-26
The idea and what was already out there…? Attending the accredited Carbon Literacy for Librar- ies shareable training planted (no pun intended) the idea of doing something about sustainable procure- ment for NHS Libraries. The idea then translated into one of my actionable plans – an essential element for completing the training and to become certified as Carbon Literate. This was the toolkit. The project objectives were for me to lead on the development and production of a toolkit to pro- mote good practice in sustainable procurement within NHS Knowledge and Library Services. Through that, library staff would be able to gain an understanding of greener procurement decisions where possible within NHS Library Services and to also engender a service wide ethos of sustainability as business as usual. It’s not
Winter 2025
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