Collaboration and marketing ensure public and medical library viability

Library Trends, Wntr, 2005 by Stephanie Weldon

ABSTRACT

THE INCREASED DEMAND FOR CONSUMER HEALTH INFORMATION over the past twenty years has inspired many to usurp the job of the librarian. Health professionals are writing articles about the provision of health information for their patients. Newspaper and magazine articles tout the importance of health information companies as the means through which the public can pay for access to health information. Hospital libraries are closing at a rapid rate throughout the United States, with hospital administrators citing lack of funding as the reason and viewing the medical library as a drain on the hospital bottom line. Collaboration and marketing are two elements that ensure the library remains viable in the eyes of health professionals, hospital administrators, and the public. As librarians, we have collaborated with each other for years with tremendous results. Now is the time to publish these successes in the professional literature of health administrators and professionals and in newspapers and popular journals. Now is the time for the public and health professionals alike to realize the contributions librarians have made and are making on the consumer health front.

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The Colorado Consumer Health Information Librarians Listserv (CCHILL) formed in 2002 and began holding quarterly meetings (National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Midcontinental Region, 2004). The CCHILL group's mission is to establish personal connections between public and medical librarians. They meet regularly to share ideas and innovations, develop relationships, talk with professionals who have similar consumer health missions in their institutions, and develop collaborative projects for the mutual benefit of the institutions and the public they serve. CCHILL has met primarily in the greater Denver area. It is hoped that the rest of the state will implement CCHILL groups as geographic areas permit.

A poster session hosted by a Douglas County and a Denison Memorial librarian at the 2004 Colorado Association of Libraries Conference will demonstrate the efficacy of CCHILL and encourage more partnerships within the state. A letter will be sent from the MidContinental Regional Medical Office at the University of Utah to hospital administrators who support their libraries, thanking them for their support and detailing the benefit that the hospital library provides to their institution. The Colorado Council of Medical Libraries Advocacy Committee will be presenting an award at the Colorado Hospital Administrators Conference to administrators who support their hospital library. These three initiatives in 2004 will hopefully provide a start to a sorely needed marketing campaign for libraries.

Involvement in the CCHILL group has demonstrated the need for marketing the positive impact of collaborative librarians not only to fellow librarians but also to administrators and the public. Many hospital administrators support the development of consumer health collections by their medical librarians and realize the importance of marketing their services to the public via the public libraries. At the same time, most hospital administrators do not realize the importance of having a consumer health collection. They do not let their librarians leave the library for training, much less explore the idea of a collaborative partnership with a public library. This lack of vision on the part of some hospital administrators is damaging not only to the librarian but also to the hospital and the patients they serve. Some public library bureaucracies also do not want to commit time or resources to partnering with hospital librarians who want to provide additional services to their public library patrons.

Hospital librarians working in partnership with public librarians have the opportunity to market to the local population. Marketing can be done by way of a public library Web site, which, on the health information page, displays the partnership that exists between them and the local hospital library. For what better and more economical endorsement could a hospital marketing department ask? In 2001 hospital marketing department budgets rose to an average $1.95 million ("Survey: Hospitals' Marketing Budgets Near $2 Million Mark," 2001). In 1997 the two hospitals that comprise Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, launched a $1 million marketing campaign ("Hospitals Start a Marketing Blitz," 1997). Medical librarians must partner with hospital marketing departments when proposing collaboration with public libraries. With the marketing department on the side of librarians, hospital administrators may see an additional value to the medical library. Hospital administrators will realize that partnership with the public library is a low-cost ad campaign that says the hospital supports the community and that the county that supports the public library is a friend of the hospital. It is easy and cost-effective marketing that should not be discounted or overlooked.

This collaboration between medical and public libraries is not for the sole benefit of the medical library. The public librarian, who answers many health questions every day, will have a resource in the medical librarian. Difficult search questions can be referred to the medical librarian, as can patrons who want access to more resources and expertise than may be available at the local library. The public library will be seen as a good steward of the taxpayer dollar. It will be endorsing advanced access for patrons to health information from reliable sources. It is in the public's interest to have service industries working together to provide the best access to health information possible. The public needs to be told of the collaborative efforts of its library.