2020 Vision for Libraries
This year’s conference covered a number of topics from teaching referencing to cataloguing, open access, future design, research cafes and accessibility.
I was especially interested in the keynote speaker Hong-Anh Nguyen – Information Services Manager at The Kings Fund. The Kings Fund are making it an organisational goal “to improve people’s understanding of the health and care system, how it works and how it is changing.” https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/health-care-explained?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=thekingsfund
Hong-Anh’s keynote resonated with me, not surprising given we both work in health libraries. She addressed many pertinent areas such as fake news, how do you reach an audience that will benefit from the information and data you research and publish yet are not aware of your existence and so will just Google?
When seeking answers the tendency is to look for a simple or definitive answer – which is not always possible e.g. answering the question is the NHS being privatised? Hong-Anh referenced some quotes from George Lakoff – “Don’t think of an elephant” – these struck a chord with me, especially with reference to the NHS privatisation debate.
In the health information world, we are familiar with the concepts of evidence based research, tools used to critically appraise articles’ and know the importance of health literacy skills. Teaching students and staff from the University and the NHS underpins a major part of the services we offer. These essential concepts are becoming more well-known and established and being adopted by other libraries outside of the health sector.
Information staff are in a pivotal role in guiding users to access authorative, unbiased information and empowering them with the skills to be digitally literate and literate with health information. An article from Rowland, Protheroe, Winkley et al in The British Journal of General Practice, found that in a sample 43% of adults do not have the literacy skills to understand health information. This increases to 61% when numbers are involved.
CILIP and LKS – Knowledge for Healthcare have active campaigns to support an increase in (health) literacy. Librarians are vital in enabling the public to make sense of the information and data that surround us. 72% of under 30s obtain their news mainly from online sources’.
All of these are skills we have and should be sharing, encouraging and educating to have a more confident, skilled public able to process and critique information.
We are told we live in an information rich society and that knowledge is power – it’s a dangerous place if people are not able to interpret the information correctly.
Between The Lines 