The Healthcare Library of NI sites at Antrim will be closed today 17th April due to illness. Staff will be working remotely to answer queries via email or the Chatbot, and access to e-resources is still available at https://healthcarelibrary.qub.ac.uk/
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
The Library will re-open following the Easter closure on 23rd April.
The Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland circulated an impact survey to all its members which ran from on 6th January until 24th January 2025. The Library wanted to obtain qualitative feedback on the impact the library service is having on the HSC, so we asked you to tell us what support you had availed off and what impact this had. We were delighted to receive 224 responses from across all the HSC Trusts and Organisation and from a broad range of the professions. This produced a rich flavour of feedback of how the library supports and helps HSC professionals.
The areas highlighted in which the library provided support, range from literature searching and training, to providing access to current literature. However, it was more the impact of the support provided had which provided encouraging and valuable insights. The Library is clearly an important source of support to HSC professionals. The impact outlined in the response’s ranges from patient care, keeping up to date, producing guidelines, enabling service improvements or supporting CPD. It is also clear that our members value the library staff and the personal support that they provide in helping to navigate the resources. The Library service is seen as an efficient and cost-effective way of accessing what is needed, reducing the stress of obtaining the literature elsewhere. One comment summed it up by saying “I find access to the healthcare library invaluable and essential”.
Below is a small selection of the range of comments received: –
“Cheered me up how people are happy to help. Reminded me what a useful resource our library is and to make more use of the help available. Thank you . “
“enhance patient care, enhance education programme, ensure evidence base in education delivery “
“Access via the medical library allowed me to efficiently identify the latest evidence so that the patient involved could be informed regarding the safety of their medication “
“I can use my time more efficiently, whilst also ensuring I keep abreast of practice and have up-to-date information when for example, i am treating patients or preparing a business case.”
“Improved my knowledge and skills which helped with providing care to patients and ideas for service / clinical practice improvements “
“The Healthcare Library, the staff and the support offered is excellent and enriches the learning experience of all that use it.”
“It was a huge benefit to me in relation to reducing stress, it allowed me to research effectively. The staff are exceptionally helpful and supportive. “
There was also some useful constructive feedback which the Library will also consider to help deliver the service, such as ease of logging in and access to some resources such as more e-books.
The Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland would like to thank all its members who took the time to complete this survey and provide such excellent feedback. If you wish to provide any further feedback this can be done at any time using the feedback form. A full report of the survey will be produced for the Department of Health to help demonstrate the value of the library service to the HSC as outlined by those who use it.
The Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland has faced ongoing challenges in maintaining its resources due to the lack of an increased budget from the Department of Health. With rising subscription costs, the budget has effectively decreased over the years, leading to a situation where maintaining the current level of resources would result in a significant financial deficit. As a result, difficult decisions have been made to stay within the available budget.
These decisions include a 50% reduction in the library’s book budget and the cancellation of 32 e-journals, two e-journal collections, and the HMIC (Health Management Information Consortium) database. The book budget reduction is already in effect, while the changes to e-journal subscriptions (see HSC Cancellation List below) will begin in January 2025. The Library acknowledges the serious impact these reductions will have on healthcare professionals and their work, and it remains committed to working with the Department of Health to find a sustainable funding solution for the future.
Annals of the rheumatic diseases
Aphasiology : an international interdisciplinary journal
Augmentative and Alternative Communication
BMJ Case Reports
BMJ Quality & safety
Brain
British Journal of Mental Health Nursing
British journal of music therapy
British journal of psychiatry
Canadian journal of anaesthesia
Cancer Nursing
Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal
Current opinion in otolaryngology & head and neck surgery
Dentomaxillofacial Radiology
Disability & Rehabilitation (incl Disability & Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology)
Disability & Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology
Dysphagia
European Heart Journal
Good Autism Practice
HMIC (Health Management Information Consortium)
Intensive care medicine
International journal of developmental disabilities
Journal of Infectious diseases
Journal of laryngology and otology.
Journal of neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry.
journal of orthopaedic & sports physical therapy [electronic resource]
Journal of Parenteral & Enteral Nutrition
Journal of Patient Safety
Journal of Pediatric Psychology
Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association
Pharmaceutical Journal
Prehospital Emergency care
Radiology & Radiographics
Taylor and Francis Mental Health and Social Care Collection
Taylor and Francis Psychology Collection
The Healthcare Library is delighted to announce that Embase is now available to all members. Embase is a database covering biomedical literature and extensive amounts of pharmacological research dating back to 1974. This resource compliments the Medline database and by searching both researchers can retrieve a good range of the biomedical research. Embase will also be particularly useful for pharmacists as it indexes drug literature in more detail than Medline.
To access Embase
If you have any queries or would like training please contact your subject librarian.
The Library has subscribed to ClinicalKey for many years. The resource gives you access to key information through tools such as clinical overviews, drug monographs and calculators, as well as many journals and e-books. If you want to find out more about the resource, why not watch the video below which gives you an overview of the range information available on ClinicalKey.
ClinicalKey is available as an app and this has recently been updated giving you quick and easy access to the information you need, when you need it. To help you get started there is a quick help sheet linked to below. Please follow the instructions for Accessing via your institution and when prompted enter the Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland as your institution. NB you will be required to log in with your Healthcare Library username and password.
ClinicalKey-App-Quick-Sheet.pdf (widen.net)
If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact your subject librarian.
The Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland has upgraded its access to Cinahl, from Cinahl Complete to Cinahl Ultimate, which is the new definitive research tool for nursing and allied health professions. This means members of the Library now have access to 100’s more journals including the RCN titles, British Journal of Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy Reviews, Podiatry Today and many more.
The Healthcare library of NI is delighted to announce that it has some new journal subscriptions for 2023. The following titles are now available online to the current issue by searching for the title on the Library search.
Zetoc alerts is a current awareness service from the British Library that allows you to set up alerts for the table of content for particular journals. The British Library sadly announced this service is being retired/discontinued on 1st August 2022. If you have any alerts set up via Zetoc these will stop from 1st August.
There are alternatives to Zetoc available to you, which you may wish to consider switching to now, and the Library has outlined some of these on its Current Awareness Libguide.
If you should have any further queries or need further advice please don’t hesitate to contact your specialist librarian.
The Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland has been closely monitoring the ongoing escalation of measures that are being applied to limit the spread of the Covid-19 (coronavirus) across the UK, including the additional measures announced by the UK Government on 16 March.
As a result of this escalation and the subsequent implications the decision has been taken to close the physical Healthcare Libraries of Northern Ireland until further notice.
While the physical libraries are closed you can continue to access the range of e-resources available through the Healthcare Library of Northern Ireland website:
We will continue to provide Library updates via the Healthcare Library website.
We recently carried out a short survey with Psychology library members to help us better understand the awareness, use and attitudes towards e-books. On the whole staff were happy to use e-books although some did express a preference for the printed copy. “I like e-books because they are so much quicker and easier to access when you need to find something out, however if I wanted to read the whole book cover to cover I find the paper version much easier to read.” However, a significant number of respondents (31%) were unaware of the e-books that are available. We will increase our promotion of e-books to ensure staff are able to get the material they need in the most time efficient way.
Thank you to everyone who responded to the short e-book survey.
