ALIA West

July 2006

Safe harbours

LIW event for ALIAWest, Monday 22 May 2006

On Monday of Library and Information Week about 20 people from various areas of the industry including legal libraries, agricultural libraries and TAFE libraries travelled to Fremantle Hospital to explore the Fremantle Hospital Library, and meet Michelle Brennand, newly elected to the ALIA Board of Directors.

The theme of the evening was 'safe harbours' and Michelle referenced Eva Cox, who contributed to the research paper on Libraries and Social Capital. She questioned why people use libraries, and acknowledged that the audience was probably familiar with the answer, which is that libraries are used for leisure, learning and information. Health Libraries particularly have a role to play to not only their main client base (i.e. the staff and students of the Hospital or Medical Group they serve) but also the wider community, whether it be by reference query over the phone or email, or by interlibrary loan requests.

Michelle went on to emphasise that the profession needs to continue to strive to provide 'safe harbour' for its members, and that we as professionals must strive to support each other. ALIA has a large part to play as well, and Michelle encouraged the audience to contact her should they have any comments or matters they wished to discuss with her.

Questions were then taken from the floor. A question was taken regarding the vacant position of Local Liason Officer for West Australia, and Michelle said they were hoping to appoint someone in the near future.

The Click 06 Conference was also mentioned, and Michelle confirmed that the program was essentially confirmed. At the time of writing the program is now available.

The evening was finished off with a chat by Cheryl Hamil, the Librarian at the Fremantle Hospital Library.

Some background

Fremantle Hospital is the flagship of Fremantle Hospital and Health Service which embraces the Woodside Maternity Hospital in East Fremantle and the Rottnest Island Nursing Post. The Fremantle Hospital and Health Service also administers a range of psychiatric facilities and community nurses based in child health centres, high schools, primary schools and community facilities.

Fremantle Hospital is an acute-care public teaching hospital. It has a major 24 hour Trauma and Emergency Centre which takes both adults and children. It offers a range of disciplines including a Cardiothoracic Surgery Service, a hyperbaric medicine unit, a nuclear medicine facility and a paediatric ward. There are more than 100 separate departments.

It is also a major teaching hospital and has university professors on site teaching the disciplines of medicine, surgery, geriatric medicine, psychiatry and general practice.

The Fremantle Hospital Library has been in existence since the 1970's, and originally was a part of the Nursing School. The library has a nice collection of first editions of major texts, and first editions of medical texts by Australian authors. The collection is shelved according to the National Library of Medicine Schedule, which is closely aligned to the Library of Congress. Like many other libraries, the Fremantle Hospital Library is moving to the electronic environment to supply its resources. The library is not officially linked to Libraries Australia, preferring to use 'GRATISNET' which is a free document supply network between health libraries. The library shares a common catalogue with the other health libraries in WA, using AMICUS. The library subscribes to 'Serials Solutions' an electronic journal service, and through this service has access to 11,200 titles. The library has a web presence on the corporate intranet which is proving to be very helpful, and a strong promotional tool.

Whilst their 'walk in' numbers are declining the visits via the website are increasing. Cheryl is very keen to improve their web presence, and increase the number and type of resources available via the web.

The evening was very informative, and ALIAWest sincerely thanks Cheryl and Michelle for very informative talks. Particular thanks go to Cheryl for offering to host the event.

Current ALIAWest Convenor, Nadine Gibbons, Jeanette Hill and Camille Peters enjoying the evening.

Cheryl Hamil, Michelle Brennand, Judy Allan and David Daw-Smith.