Collaboration and marketing ensure public and medical library viability

Library Trends, Wntr, 2005 by Stephanie Weldon

We must work to inform health professionals, at all levels, of the importance of the library. A resident once stated in a class entitled "What Your Patients Know," taught as part of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center Informatics Program, which the library offers to third- and fourth-year medical students, "pretty soon our patients are going to have access to as much information as we have." The response was "they already do have access and you have the opportunity to direct their quest for knowledge to reputable, quality sources of health information. As health professionals you can encourage your patients to visit their medical library. You can build a Web site referring your patients to the medical library's Web site. You can encourage your administration to keep a hospital library on site and also encourage them to support a consumer health library."

The authors who fail to mention the library in their articles about providing health information and health literacy still see the library as a place to simply catalog information. They view librarians as lacking in technology and education skills. There are many types of librarians. All are necessary, from the cataloger to those who perform outreach and education. We need to let the health professionals and public know that we are there to assist in providing health information. We make their jobs easier so they can focus on providing care to the patient. We make the hospital administrator's job easier as we collaborate with the marketing department to ensure that partnerships are made with local public libraries. We can send our patients to the public library for classes on searching the Internet for health information, and the public librarians can send their patrons to medical librarians for access to expert searching.

Our collaborations and innovations must be advertised in the media that the health professionals and public access. As a profession, we are so effective and committed to service that our efforts tend to escape the radar screen of the public as a whole, our administrators, and the people we serve. We must make them aware of our worth.

REFERENCES

Abbott Laboratories. (2004). Home page. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://abbott.com.

Amey, L. (1993). Marketing library services: Lessons from the private sector. Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services, 6(2), 69-74.

Austin, M. (2003, April 27). New RX for health: Informed patients--specific research targets each case. Denver Post, Business Section.

Campbell. R.J. (2002). Consumer health, patient education and the Internet. Internet Journal of Health, 2(2). Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php? xmlFilePath=journals/ijh/vol2n2/consumer.xml.

CAPHIS. (2004). Home page. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://caphis.mlanet.org.

Cashen, M. S., Dykes, P., & Gerber, B. (2004). EHealth technology and Internet resources--barriers for vulnerable populations. Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 19(3), 209-214.