Muir Gray's Librarian Manifesto

Dear all
Below is Muir Gray's 5 point Librarian Manifesto. This is his personal manifesto which he uses to champion librarians - it covers the sort of things he says at what is sometimes called the "highest level of decision-making", to try to bring librarianship onto an equal footing with IT in the minds of those at that level. Muir is not a librarian, but believes whole-heartedly in the value and skills of the library profession, and so uses his manifesto and his position outside the profession to champion us wherever and whenever he can.

• More librarians
• More librarians close to clinicians and management; the librarian is the most valuable resource in the library and they are even more valuable outside the library
• The library service to be as highly valued as IT
• Better valued librarians
• Librarians empowered to run knowledge systems delivering knowledge where and when it is needed

SSE - launch delayed

Dear Colleagues
Plans for the official launch of the National Library for Health are progressing well and we look forward to seeing many of our colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital on the 17th November. This event will generate interest in the services that the NLH has to offer now, and the developments that are in the pipeline for the coming months. I am aware that many of you have activities planned for next week to demonstrate the new service to your clinicians.
With regards to the single search component, in response to feedback during our last round of testing, we have asked FDI for some extra development work and there just isn't time to complete this and give you all sufficient time to familiarise yourselves with this, before the 17th November. Therefore, after much debate, we have decided to introduce the search element of the NLH service in stages.

The new programme for the SSE roll-out will now be as follows:
17th November: The official NLH launch - including an overview and a demonstration of the SSE to generate awareness and interest amongst the press and clinicians in the new service.
Development work and testing will continue into early December.
The test site will then be made available to library staff during December to allow you to familiarise yourselves with the search and how it works.
10th January 2005: the search will go live

We believe that this new timetable will ensure that when the service is made available to clinicians, it offers a service of the highest quality, and all our colleagues are really familiar with what it can do. A rolling demonstrator of the search engine has been created and can be seen at http://www.library.nhs.uk/searchdemo and is available now to provide you with a demonstration of the key features of the new service.
New developments will continue to be added to the www.library.nhs.uk site over the coming months, so we would ask that you help us in encouraging end-users to move from the current NeLH site to the new site over the next few months. The current NeLH site will continue as it is until at least spring 2005.
We appreciate that many of you have put a lot of hard work into preparing for Health Libraries Week and the launch of the new site and search. Health Libraries Week is a great opportunity to promote your library as well as electronic resources.
Kind regards
Ben Toth, NLH Programme Director & Robin Murray, Managing Director Fretwell Downing Informatics

Single Search Engine Delay

Having read the communications proposals in the Communications and Consultation Plan I'm a little confused why DLNet blog has not been used as a method of communication to keep people informed of the delay in Single Search Engine. Particularly as it has the immediacy of RSS feeds which would be advantageous considering the lateness of information on the delay.

Notes from HLW Call on 3rd November

The call gave a quick run down of what's happening during HLW:

• New NLH site going live on Monday 15th Nov, with the directory of resources, Hitting the Headlines and news, a preview area, a For Librarians area, and an About NLH area
• The Single Search is being launched on Wednesday 17th November - this means that for Monday and Tuesday of HLW, the search will not be available, although a demo of the search will be - we're sorry about this, but our hands are tied with the development teams
• The official launch on the 17th will launch the search, the first set of titles from the new Mental Health e-book collection, the pilot Question and Answering service for Primary Care, and some new Map of Medicine pages

There are also some more NLH pens in stock, and there is still time to order them, as well as more resource cards, postcards, or whole promotional boxes. We've had some problems with the order line, but orders are now getting through - see http://library.editme.com for more details of what's available and how to order.

Knowledgexchange - community for sharing expertise.

I have just found this useful resource which enables health and social care professionals to share their expertise. Knowledgexchange (http://www.theknowledgexchange.co.uk/) is a web-based community that connects health and social care professionals, enabling them to share advice and information on a wide range of health-related topics. It covers all areas in health care, including training, clinical and management issues. The service is already used by over 2,300 NHS managers and is free to NHS staff. I found out about this site via IDeA Knowledge (http://www.idea.gov.uk/knowledge/) which is another knowledge management resource for local government.