Integrated Care System staff - help us to help you.

As part of an NHS England funded project we are looking at the possibility of extending access to NHS library services in the county to all staff who work within the Northamptonshire Integrated Care System. This would include staff in:

• Primary care
• Integrated care board
• Social care
• Care homes
• Third / voluntary sector care staff

NHS libraries can support you by:

• Searching the evidence for you
• Training you in information skills
• Providing access to books and journals, in print and online, databases and other online resources
• Offering a place to work or study with 24/7 access
• And much more...

To understand what the problems are staff in the county are facing with finding information, and what you already have access to, we have created a short survey that we are asking anyone who works in the integrated care system (not NHFT, NGH or KGH staff) to complete. 

It should only take a few minutes and would help us to collect evidence to support a business case to the Integrated Care Board.

You can find the survey here: https://forms.office.com/e/uSaZf91h60

Many thanks for your help.

Consultation on the future of Isebrook Hospital Library

As a service we are conscious that many Trust staff do not have direct access to a library and there is a need to develop more services that are delivered in the workplace and outside of the library sites to improve the equity of access to our services.

As part of this development we have been reviewing the levels of use at Isebrook Library, which have been relatively low since the end of the pandemic.

We are proposing to close the library at the Isebrook hospital site in order to enable more outreach services that can be delivered at all trust sites.

Closing the library would free up library staff time and enable members of the team to go out to trust sites across the county, potentially delivering training, dealing with enquiries and better enabling us to ensure the evidence you need is available at your location of choice.

However, we are aware that for some staff, Isebrook library is a useful resource, so we are asking our users to comment on this proposal and what the impact of the closure might be.

If you have a view on the closure of the library at Isebrook Hospital, we would really like to hear from you.

Please take a few minutes to complete our brief online survey and tell us what you think https://forms.office.com/e/3Ragcyiaii

The consultation survey will be open from Friday the 28th of April until the 25th of May.

Do you use NHS eBooks? HEE are after your views.

Health Education England are conducting a survey to find out what NHS staff need from electronic books provided by NHS Library Services.

If you are a user of our eBook collections, or have a view on the provision of eBooks to the NHS, please complete this short survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BDDTRRY 

It will take no more than 10 minutes of your time and help support local library services and Health Education England to ensure the content you need is available to support your work and learning.

Browzine trial extended

The Library's trial of BrowZine has now been extended until the end of March. BrowZine is a new way to access all our full text journal content from a simple interface or by using the app. 

Browzine is a smart, easy-to-use service which enables you to:

• Browse our journal subscriptions to see what titles we hold in your specialty / areas of interest 
• Browse table of contents of our journals and link straight through to the full text of most articles
• Bookmark your favourite journals and receive alerts on your mobile device when new articles are published in that journal

If you need access to information on the go, the Browzine app is available for Android phones and tablets, the Kindle Fire (Amazon) and iOS (Apple) for iPhones and iPads.

There is a brief guide to using BrowZine on our web site.

If you don't want to use an app, you can also access Browzine through any computer.

• NHFT staff can see their content here: https://browzine.com/libraries/1776/ 
• Northampton General Hospital staff here: https://browzine.com/libraries/1775/

The trial is available until the end of March and we would love to have your feedback.

Please just answer three quick questions to help us understand if we should consider purchasing Browzine  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VNC3V2J

BrowZine: Trial of a new simple way to access the journals you need

The Library is having a trial of BrowZine, which is a new way to access all our full text journal content from a simple interface or by using the app. 

Browzine is a smart, easy-to-use service which enables you to:

• Browse our journal subscriptions to see what titles we hold in your specialty / areas of interest 
• Browse table of contents of our journals and link straight through to the full text of most articles
• Bookmark your favourite journals and receive alerts on your mobile device when new articles are published in that journal

If you need access to information on the go, the Browzine app is available for Android phones and tablets, the Kindle Fire (Amazon) and iOS (Apple) for iPhones and iPads.

There is a brief guide to using BrowZine on our web site.

If you don't want to use an app, you can also access Browzine through any computer.

• NHFT staff can see their content here: https://browzine.com/libraries/1776/
• Northampton General Hospital staff here: https://browzine.com/libraries/1775/

The trial is available until the end of January and we would love to have your feedback.

Please just answer three quick questions to help us understand if we should consider purchasing Browzine  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VNC3V2J

Leisure reading - what would you like to read for fun?

The Library Service has been very fortunate to have succeeded in a bid to Greenheart, the charitable fund for some funding to set up a leisure reading collection.

Although we already have a small collection of fiction titles (mainly donated by library staff), we would like to know what you would like to read.

What would make you want to borrow a book?

The latest Booker nominee? A thriller? Sci fi? Romance? The classics? Maybe gardening is more your thing? Hobbies and crafts? Military history?

Whatever it might be that takes your literary fancy, please take a few minutes to complete our short survey (just 6 questions) on what you would like to see in our new leisure collection.

You can find it here: www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/M323L9T 

Don't be shy, give us a recommendation or two and you may well find them in the library and ready for you to borrow.

We'd like some feedback on our new library catalogue

We have just launched a new version of our library catalogue, offering a more sophisticated searching experience. It will pull back results even if you misspell something (within reason anyway) and offers you a number of filters for narrowing down your search results, including publication date, author and loan period.

Our new catalogue

There is also an advanced search option if you want to use a more precise search strategy,

As with our old catalogue, you can also search for reading lists and see what we hold in stock for a wide variety of courses from the universities of Northampton, Leicester and Oxford.

Every time you conduct a search, the system automatically creates a link to an RSS feed. This means you can save the feed if you wish to keep track of new things on your chosen topic as they come along (see the excellent Potted Guide on Phil Bradley's web site if you want to know more about RSS).

You can also reserve items, have them sent to your NHFT library of choice and renew any loans you have via the catalogue by logging into your account (you will have previously needed to get your PIN from one of the libraries). Once logged in you can also create and save lists of titles you are interested in.

We think the new catalogue offers a more sophisticated "Google" type experience and hope it makes it easier for you to find the items you want as well as reserving and renewing items you have already borrowed.

More importantly though, we'd like to know what you think. If you have a few minutes, please have a look at our catalogue and then complete this very short (5 question) survey http://svy.mk/1xgBqdI

Many thanks...

Clinicalskills Net trial - still time to give your views

 As we previously mentioned in our Web Site of the Month feature, our trial of Clinicalskills.Net runs until the end of March, so there is still time for you to have a look at the package and give us your feedback.

Lots of staff have already told us their views but we are keen to have the widest possible feedback before deciding on if we should purchase it.

To gain access to Clinicalskills.net please see The Street for NGH staff or The Hub for NHFT staff, or contact one of the libraries.

We really would like to know what you think...

Web site of the month: trial of Clinicalskills.Net - your views needed

For the whole of March we are having a trial of Clinicalskills.Net and would really value your feedback.

Clinicalskills.Net is an on-line service that holds sets of illustrated clinical skills guidelines. It is designed to  help you understand the principles of a particular skill.

The information about best practice for over 160 procedures is delivered in a highly accessible format using clear graphics supported by text and references. Because clinicalskills.net is highly illustrated, it is very user friendly. It can also help to facilitate study for those whose first language is not English and those returning to work after a break.

All procedures featured are evidence-based with numerous click-through links to valuable national guidance and other published papers.

Clincalskills.Net could be of value for nurses, HCAs, AHPs, medical students, junior doctors, educators and more.

You can find the log in details for the site at any of our libraries. Alternatively, if you have access to the Northamptonshire Healthcare or Northampton General Hospital  Intranet sites (the Hub and the Street), you can find the details on our pages there.

Journal usage survey September 2012

Throughout the whole of September we will be conducting a survey into the use of our current journal subscriptions. We are doing this to ensure we get the best value from the titles we subscribe to and do not waste money by purchasing journals that few people read (and we can still supply articles from any journal not in stock of course).

Courtesy of CedarLakeReflections

Our electronic journals automatically collect statistics, but we also need to know about our print journals too. We ask that if you come into one of the libraries and read a journal, that you help us by ticking the slip you will find attached to the front cover of any of the current issues.

Likewise if you read an issue without a slip, please place it in one of the journals survey boxes you'll find in the libraries so we can make sure we include it in our usage count.

Do let us know if you have any questions about the journals survey.