Clinical Librarian Study Day debrief

I wish I could tell you all about the business planning session run by Jacqui Cox and Louise Hull, but I was helping out in another session with Sarah Sutton, so I couldn't sit in on that one.

What I can tell you about is the marketing session. Sarah gave one of her trademark presentations bursting with ideas, and then threw the floor open in little groups to come up with a few more that have worked. I heard some things I hadn't thought of before, and I have the sheet with all the post-its on in my folder next to me right now, to be typed up and put onto our website proper. Sarah referenced a particularly good article in her presentation:

Bridges, Jane. Marketing the hospital library. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 2005, 24(3), 81-92.

I've definitely come up with a few things I'd like to do in the future, such as hook up with our internal conference organiser & see if we can offer things like summaries of available evidence on topics, or recommended reading lists.

After a lovely curry lunch (Leicester Hospitals do curry really rather well), there was plenty of time to do some catching up with old faces and meet quite a few new ones. Since I was on home turf, I did also get to pop back to the library and man the desk while the library assistants got some lunch too.

We had a brief talk from Jacqui Cox about moving clinical librarianship forwards after the break, and then it was time for more workshop sessions. I ran a session on a digests that was really just an informal chat between groups of what should and shouldn't go into a digest. We all mused about whether a search strategy should be there at all, and whether it should have star billing. As librarians, I think we tend to feel that the strategy is king, and it is, but I have an inkling that the customers may be more interested in the results than the process.

Having looked at the evaluation forms at the end of the day, I think we packed a lot in, and most people seemed happy with what they'd taken from the day. We try our best to plan days that allow for plenty of networking, since a lot of CLs work in a kind of isolation, and it's always nice to get out, meet colleagues and find reassurance that you're not the only person doing things a certain way. We're always interested in new suggestions for things we can do though.

Which leads me to the launch of the 5th International Clinical Librarian Conference. I put out a call for papers at the Study Day and via clin-lib@jiscmail.ac.uk this week, and the website is now live and accepting bookings (credit card payment to follow). Maybe something we talked about at the Study Day will be enough to spark one of you into submitting an abstract for a presentation in Birmingham next year!

I'm going to get the Study Day details on the website ASAP, but I'm moving house next week, so it might take just a little while longer.