CoP this! On patrol with the new library assistants community of practice
As a newish library assistant, I was excited to join this event to kick off the new community of practice (CoP) set up by an amazing team across NHS Libraries in England, led by Sarah Lewis from Buckinghamshire Trust. I joined the Northumbria Trust nearly a year ago and am based in Cramlington between the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital and the shiny new Health and Care Academy at the same site. I’m new to a career in libraries, having previously worked in admin and customer service since graduating from university. A fun fact about me, however, is that I’m a sneaky library nepo baby as my mum and both her parents worked in libraries too (primary school, public and archives respectively – ages ago, in the south and nothing to do with the NHS.) Maybe it’s destiny, maybe it’s the irresistible, and apparently genetic, urge to work with books and be nerdy about something.
Being a library assistant in the NHS has easily been the best job I’ve had across my varied career so far. I’ve been here nearly a year now and am extremely lucky to have a wonderful team around me, particularly some talented and dedicated library assistants. Library assistants and other paraprofessionals do essential work in areas like academic support, information management, communications and marketing, and it’s important that we have a space to share ideas and promote collaboration. So, when I heard about the new CoP I couldn’t wait to join!
The opening event was held on Teams and was attended by more than 70 people. We started with an introduction from Sarah Lewis and the CoP team, before handing over to the Chief Knowledge Officer at NHS England, Louise Goswami. Louise outlined the purpose of COPs, shouting out others that exist within the NHS Library Service, which can be found on the KLS website. Louise also spoke about AI and its developing role within the sector and impact on jobs, a subject I have mixed emotions towards, but is something many library assistants are concerned by. Lastly, she spotlighted the training and knowledge guides available on the Learning Academy website.
We then broke off into smaller groups, to discuss a few questions and then feed back our ideas to the group. We discussed a wide range of topics, including change management, wellbeing support, automation and marketing, for example.
Marketing is a large part of our roles as library assistants, often using online tools and in-person events to raise the profile of library services, and to engage students and staff. In my trust we are currently working on a redesign of our website, and more training and resources to support this would be really appreciated. I also write a newsletter as part of this year’s scheme ‘DIY Book Club’, promoting a monthly theme and sharing book recommendations, and it was interesting to hear other Trusts’ approaches to this.
Microsoft Sway was mentioned as a tool for sharing newsletters, which I had not been aware of. In the last couple of days, I wrote July’s newsletter using Sway, and have had positive feedback from it, especially the photo stack feature which adds a lot of visual interest for book cover images! As a result, I’m so pleased that we are already benefitting from this CoP and am looking forward to a potential repository for resources, and future presentations on best practice in future.
Education and career development are important concerns in promoting career progression. We discussed the importance of training opportunities and shadowing. We also spoke about a need for more training on effectively using library management systems. It’s important to note that we come from extremely varied working environments across the country and we felt how beneficial it would be to share knowledge and expertise
The team leading the CoP finished up by demonstrating the use of an amazing resource specifically for NHS library staff: the Learning Academy Library. I had briefly scanned over this once or twice before but had not realised the range of books available. It’s an excellent place to start when developing your role and career development. The team are looking for feedback on how the library can support library assistants further, and have set up a Padlet page for this (more inspiration for digital tools we can use!)
Finally, the team thanked us for attending and contributing, and reminded us that the CoP have a Workspace on NHS Futures, which can be used to share resources and stay up to date. I’d like to thank everyone involved for their work setting up this community, and I’m really looking forward to what comes next!
Charlotte Elliott – Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust
