A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to 'A day in the life of a clinical librarian' blog series. This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.

This month we're interviewing one of our Clinical Information Search Service Officers.

Who are you and where do you work?

Hi, I’m Joanna and I’m a Clinical Information Search Service (CISS) Officer at the University of Hospitals Leicester. I am part of a job share and work 3 days a week supporting the Clinical Librarian Service across the 3 UHL sites, although I'm mainly based at the Royal Infirmary and Glenfield hospitals.

How long have you been there?

I have been here for 2 ½ years. Previously I was an Assistant Librarian at a corporate law firm in London for 5 ½ years.

What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?

I have worked in various sectors before moving to the NHS, including a university, government department and several law firms. What attracted me to clinical librarianship was the variety of work involved and knowing that the work we do feeds back into furthering medical knowledge and improving patient care.

What does an average day at work involve?

Starting with a strong cup of tea, I usually look through my emails first and prioritise jobs for the day. These jobs can range from locating articles to producing and circulating Evidence Updates on various topics to managing our blog, website and twitter profile and taking minutes at our team meetings. As my role is aimed at providing support to the clinical librarians, I also often pick up any literature searches when the team is inundated with requests and help organise study days too.

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?

If I could be both a professional, expert gardener and some kind of designer, that would be amazing. Or if money wasn’t an issue, I’d love to run a shop that runs craft courses by day and turns into a gig venue by night for all my favourite bands to play at!

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself

Way back I did a course on vinyl dj-ing and have dj’d at several venues in London. I once got so excited about getting to play the Rolling Stones (one of my favourite bands) that I managed to play the same song twice. Thankfully it went down pretty well.