Health Libraries as Joint Use Libraries: Serving Medical Practitioners and Students

Libraries, whether medical or healthcare, in higher education (HE) institutions or the National Health Service (NHS), provide services to all types of healthcare students and professionals. Many of these are delivered through contracts, in the form of service-level agreements, between the two key organizations. The challenge to librarians is ensuring that users are provided with access to the resources they need and the skills to use those resources to the benefit of a patient-centered environment. External drivers such as developments in education, a continuously modernizing health service, and new technology have infiuenced the development of services. Issues regarding the access to electronic information for the different user groups still exist. Librarians have to support the differing user groups, who may have varying levels of computer and library skills, and provide skills training on a wide variety of resources from their own institution and from nationally provided content.