May 2023 – Helen Else discusses the new Specialist Patient Outreach Librarian role at Royal Papworth Hospital

This month, Helen Else joined us at the Medical School Library to discuss the creation of a new and unique role, the Specialist Patient Outreach Librarian. Helen started her career in schools before making a career change 6 years ago to enter the library sector. Impressively, Helen then achieved her MA and MCLIP simultaneously. Now working as the Library and Knowledge Services Manager at Papworth, Helen is passionate about providing a comprehensive patient outreach service.

So where did this new role come from? In 2021, Papworth Charity launched the Read a Little Aloud project, whereby members of Cambridge Library virtually read live to critical care patients. Acknowledging that being an inpatient can be extremely isolating and lonely, the Read a Little Aloud project aimed to improve patient wellbeing and aid recovery. The project prompted the Deputy Chief Nurse to ask the former Library Manager, “what more can be done to improve patient experience?”. While the benefits of reading on health and wellbeing are widely recognised, the impact of involving people in their own health and care is not emphasised enough. It was here that the idea of the Specialist Patient Outreach Librarian was born, and with the support of Papworth Charity, funding was secured for one year.

The first challenge was to design a completely new job profile. As it is the first of its kind, there was no template to use. Helen showed us the job profile she created and while it was quite long and had a lot of essential criteria, the most important quality was being a people person: the ability to communicate well, build trust, and create relationships with patients and ward staff is a huge part of this role.

Sarah Mathieson was appointed to the role in August 2022 and has already accomplished so much. Sarah has visited 121 wards so far, created patient handbooks and leaflets, ran training sessions in specialised areas e.g., health literacy, improved patient access to reliable sources of information, conducted evidence searches, and created an online form for clinical staff to contact her directly. Sarah has also established key networks, good relations with other trusts, and has continued to work closely with Cambridgeshire public libraries. All patients, even if their postcode is outside of the Cambridgeshire area, are able to access the electronic services available through Cambridgeshire Libraries. This includes newspapers and journals in many different languages. Helen explained that reading in English as a second language can cause additional stress to patients, so the availability of texts in other (non-translated) languages is really important. Sarah also achieved funding to buy 12 loanable iPads for patients to use if they don’t have an appropriate device to access these materials from.

While most Librarians don't usually have direct contact with patients, all aspects of the Specialist Patient Outreach Librarian role benefit patient care, either directly or indirectly. However, with funding only guaranteed for one-year, the future of this role is uncertain. Helen discussed the challenges of evidencing the impact of this position, especially because it has only existed for under a year. To help the trust decide, quantitative evidence is desired which is difficult because in the short-term, the measurable successes are mostly qualitative.

 

Helen’s talk was fantastic and I’m sure I speak for all CLG members when I say that our fingers are crossed that funding is granted to extend the Specialist Patient Outreach Librarian role.

 

Post contributed by Lily Swain - Graduate Trainee, Anglia Ruskin University.

April 2023 - Graduate Trainee Talk

On 27th April, the Cambridge Library Trainees from Anglia Ruskin University, Pembroke College, Christ’s College, and Trinity College joined CLG to speak about their traineeships, share their individual projects, and reflect on their experiences so far.

Graduate Traineeships are one-year fixed term training posts intended to provide valuable work experience prior to pursuing a postgraduate qualification in library and information studies. Part of a cohort of 7, the Cambridge trainees are all based at different libraries but have a shared programme of visits throughout the year to explore different areas of librarianship and help inform their future careers. Some of their visits include Cambridgeshire Archives, Cambridge Judge Business School, various College Libraries, the Medical School Library, Hills Road Sixth Form, Norwich Public Library, and the British Library. The trainees are also responsible for a blog website and Twitter account.

We were all very grateful for the opportunity to speak at the CLG event and have summarised our presentations below.

Lily Swain, Anglia Ruskin University
I started my talk by briefly explaining the structure of the library team at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). Consisting of almost 50 colleagues across 3 different campuses (Cambridge, Chelmsford, and Peterborough), the library team is split into 4 areas: Customer Services, Content Delivery & Discovery, Academic Services, and Research Services. I sit within Customer Services, offering frontline support to students alongside 11 other Library Services Advisers.

In addition to my core responsibilities, I am a member of the Student & Library Services (SLS) Learning & Development working group. SLS includes staff from the Library, Student Advice, Employability, Counselling & Wellbeing, and Disability Support, so being part of this working group is a really great opportunity to work closely with colleagues from across the wider university. In this group, we primarily host and facilitate ‘Learning Hours’, which are typically hour-long learning sessions. I have also organised the Job Shadowing programme for this academic year which is being offered to the whole of SLS (around 200 staff). I have spent a lot of time considering the wording and tone of the communication, thinking about logistics, setting out clear expectations (whilst making sure it sounds fun!), creating accompanying documents, and teaching myself Photoshop along the way.

Learning and development, reflection, and knowledge exchange are incredibly important aspects of working at ARU. To that end, I spoke about the incredible opportunities I have been presented with this year. I have been lucky enough to work at ARU Chelmsford Library, attend various webinars and workshops, and organise additional visits outside of the shared programme. In July, I am going on secondment to the Research Services Team, who primarily assist academic staff in making their publications and research open access; I’m really looking forward to this because it’s a completely different side of librarianship. Finally, I was given the opportunity to become a committee member of Cambridge Library Group, which has complemented my traineeship in so many ways and I have enjoyed immensely.

Nick Nuttall (Pembroke College)
For the CLG Graduate Trainee talk, I spoke about both my everyday duties as a trainee as well as some of the projects I’ve been able to work on throughout my year. Firstly, I’ve been working closely with an early printed book from our Special Collections, cataloguing it and researching its provenance. The book is from 1638 and contains hundreds of hand-coloured illustrations, and a great variety of manuscript annotations. This has been an invaluable introduction to early printed books for me, as I’d like to work with special collections in the future.

I’ve also been reclassifying and organising the Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic section of our library; a wonderful opportunity to make use of my subject knowledge from my master’s degree to help current and future students more easily find the books they need. This has involved creating new classification headings for our in-house scheme, according to what I feel are the most appropriate divisions for the materials, while also considering the range and depth of our particular collection and what will be prioritised by the students taking the relevant papers. On top of this I have also been checking the reading lists in detail to ensure our collection is up to date and have highlighted certain texts I feel it would be most beneficial for us to have.

Finally, I’m working on a project for the College Archivist, who works closely with the Library team at Pembroke. I’m researching biographical information of people for whom we have ephemera records in the Archive. These biographies help fill out our Archive records and provide useful information for researchers looking at our collections. It has been great to learn about the differences between archival and library work such as in record creation, research, and record content.

Madeline Birnbaum (Trinity College)
I was very glad to be able to speak at the CLG talk and to share a bit about my daily duties as the Graduate Trainee at Trinity. I spoke about the benefits of being able to work across both the academic library and the Wren, Trinity’s special collections library, and about some of my responsibilities in each setting. In the academic library, I’ve been able to gain a great deal of experience in modern cataloguing, as we’ve had a particularly significant influx of books recently; I am also responsible for managing all incoming serials, helping to check readings lists and create displays, and pitching in with all the other odds and ends that emerge when working in such a busy, dynamic library and College. In the Wren, my main task is supervising and assisting readers when I have shifts on Wren Desk, as well as fetching materials. Checking back materials and creating checking back slips by systematically inventorying the contents and condition of items is an enjoyable way of getting to know aspects of the collection, and I’ve loved seeing the breadth of materials that Trinity holds, from twelfth century illuminated manuscripts to nineteenth century love letters. I’ve also been fortunate to be involved in curating two exhibitions in the Wren, one on the history of the Wren Library itself, and the other, which is still in the works, on sixteenth century widows in the book trade. It’s been a joy to work at Trinity, and I’m so grateful to have been able to take my first step into librarianship here.

Rebekah Cohen (Christ's College)
For my graduate trainee talk, I spoke to CLG about my involvement in the Old Library book move project happening at Christ's this year. Alongside my daily duties in the working library (such as shelving, processing, and cataloguing new books) I have helped to prepare the Old Library special collections to be moved off-site, due to building works planned for the area of College where the Old Library is situated. Many of the items in the Lower Old Library (home to mainly nineteenth- and twentieth-century material) had not yet been catalogued, and I was able to help the rest of the library team create new records for this part of our special collections. My other tasks for this project have included measuring shelf space, and photographing items to be catalogued at a later date. Working with special collections was something I was most excited to experience as part of a Cambridge college-based traineeship, and I have found the book move to be an immensely rewarding way of gaining a wide-ranging knowledge of special collections at Christ's. I have enjoyed investigating interesting parts of the collection, and helping solve questions that have arisen as a result. For example, trying to decode which non-book items in the Old Library belong to the archive collection, and which are classed as library objects. I am really grateful to have had this varied experience during my trainee year!