Libraries Week 2019: Celebrating our Content and Digital Infrastructure team

Libraries Week takes place between 7th – 12th October 2019. This year’s campaign is focused on celebrating the role of libraries in the digital world. Over the course of the week we’ll be introducing you to different teams within the Library and explore how they use technology to support our community.

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Today’s post features a contribution from our Content and Digital Infrastructure Team and will be highlighting what goes on behind the scenes to facilitate user access to our physical and digital resources.

In terms of connecting our library users to content, digital has transformed the parameters of our service and brought many benefits to our users, but with it has also come additional complexities and challenges. The Content and Digital Infrastructure team work together closely to meet these challenges and facilitate the opportunities offered by digital innovations to better meet the information needs of our users.

Meet the team

Lawrence Jones, our Content and Digital Infrastructure Manager, oversees the library’s activities in this area and has particular responsibility for systems such as our Library Management System and our library search tool Hunter – these integrated systems enable all the core activities around the library from access to the library space itself through to finding and accessing articles online.

Clementina Sanchez, our Acquisitions Librarian, supported by Georgina Coles, Information Assistant – takes care of the purchase, processing and cataloguing of books and e-books to ensure our book stock is kept current and in good condition – ready for when you need it!

Verity Allison, our Journals and E-resources Librarian, supported by Hilary Garrett, Information Assistant – manages the journals that the library subscribes to along with other specialist e-resources such as healthcare databases like Medline, and audio-visual resources such as Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy.

Interlibrary Loans Team – AKA Jane Appleton and Hilary Garrett, Information Assistants, locate books and articles from outside our collections on those occasions when we just don’t have the item you’re after.

Further information about using our resources can be found on the Using the Library webpages and on our  Help with Library Resources webpages.

How do we use technology to support our users?

Using the benefits of digital to enhance our physical services

The move from print to electronic journals has had a fairly dramatic impact on the physical layout of the library. With most journal subscriptions now online, we no longer require the rows and rows of shelving to accommodate print copies and can offer far more study spaces, which is of real benefit to our users today. The slideshow below shows before/after images of our silent study section after our last refurbishment:

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In addition to this, recent upgrades to our Library Management System, Entry Gates and the installation of RFID self-service machines have made it easier than ever for our library users to self-manage their library accounts and borrowing activities, enabling the library to offer extended 24-hour opening. As long as users have their ID/Library access card with them they can access study spaces in the libraries and computer rooms 24 hours a day, borrow and return books throughout the day or night. Given the 24-hour nature of healthcare this facilitates better access for both our students and NHS trust users, as access to the library and our resources can be accommodated around any shift or study pattern.

To further support continuity of access for our users, our collection development policy supports where possible the purchase of e-book copies in supplement to print copies for reading list materials – so even if a physical copy of the book is not available, or if you are unable to be onsite, the content remains available.

Using the benefits of digital to enhance online access

The Library now manages access to thousands of journal titles, far in excess of what we ever could have accommodated physically in print, giving staff and students at St George’s access to far more content than before, with the added convenience that in most cases it can be accessed from anywhere and at any time.

However, with online journals the Library typically licenses the content for a specific period of time, whereas with print journals we owned the volumes and issues of the journals we purchased. The Journals and e-resources team negotiate the terms and conditions of these licences with our suppliers each year, making these transactions far more complex, but giving us the opportunity to ensure the licence enables us to use the content in ways that meet our needs in the ever changing Digital context. For example, in recent years we have seen improvements in licence terms around the use of content in VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments – such as Canvas, used at St George’s, University of London) to better support teaching and learning, and improvement in terms around data-mining to support research activities.

Supporting access to online subscriptions also requires maintaining a number of key systems, such as our link resolver, in addition to the more conventional library catalogue – which is also completely digital these days. The upgrades to our Library Management System and Library Search Tool – Hunter, implemented over the last two years have now integrated the functionality of the library catalogue and link resolver in to a single search tool, Hunter, enabling users to search in one place for books, journals, articles and more with live holdings information for all books and links through to the full text of articles that we have access to. These full text links are also integrated in to our other healthcare databases, and popular free tools such as Google Scholar (some set-up steps required, see below) and PubMed – look for the ‘Find it @ SGUL’ links to check for availability via St George’s Library.

Get connected, get creative and learn new skills

Use our library search tool Hunter– it is designed to search on material that St George’s University of London owns/subscribes to, focusing your search on the high-quality information resources selected by St George’s academics, researchers and librarians that you will be able to access with your university login.

Set up ‘Find it @ SGUL’ links in Google Scholar – for easier access to the full text of your search results where available via St George’s Library:

1. Click on the menu at the top left of the Google Scholar home page
2. Select ‘Settings’
3. Select ‘Library links’
4. Search for ‘st george’
5. Select ‘St George’s University of London’
6. Click Save

Bookmark the Library’s PubMed link: this link is customised to our holdings so that you will see ‘Find it @ SGUL’ links in for your PubMed search results, giving you easier access to the full text where available via St George’s Library.

Check for access via your local library:

At St George’s Library we manage a highly specialist collection – occasionally we get requests for resources which are just too general for our service but these can often be accessed for free via your local library. Wandsworth Libraries provide online access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Oxford Dictionaries Online, and Press Reader (offers instant access to over 4000 newspapers and magazines) and more…why not register online today?

Need help?

We can provide help and support in person from the Library’s Helpdesk and Research Enquiries Desk, or if you have a query for a specific member of the team contact us on journals@sgul.ac.uk

We look forward to hearing from you.

Libraries Week 2019: Celebrating Archives

Libraries Week takes place between 7th – 12th October 2019. This year’s campaign is focused on celebrating the role of libraries in the digital world. Over the course of the week we’ll be introducing you to different teams within the Library and explore how they use technology to support our community.

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Today’s post comes from our Archives team, who have been involved in a large-scale digitisation project – so this year’s Libraries Week theme offered a perfect opportunity to provide an update! Click here for previous posts from our Archives.

Opening Up the Body: Digitising, cataloguing and visualising post mortem case books

Opening Up the Body is a project to conserve the Post Mortem Examinations and Case Books of St George’s Hospital, 1841-1946, and to catalogue and digitise those dating from 1841-1917 – that’s about 27,132 cases across 76 volumes. The catalogue data and digitised images will be made available on the St George’s, University of London website.

Post mortem of Caroline Parker, 42, from 1865.

The volumes contain manuscript case notes and detailed reports of the patients’ medical history, including details of treatments and medicines administered to patients. They also contain comprehensive reports of the pathological findings made during the detailed examination of the body after death. These rich and detailed post mortem records are a unique resource, which will contribute to our understanding of medical education, death practices, and the history of London’s hospitals and infectious diseases, amongst other things. Moreover, the volumes feature notable physicians and surgeons, including Henry Gray, who compiled his influential ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ whilst performing post mortems at St George’s.

Meet the team

Two Project Archivists have now started to catalogue the post mortem volumes and the project team consists of the University Archivist, Carly Manson, and two Project Archivists, Juulia Ahvensalmi and Natasha Shillingford.

How do we use technology to support our users?

AtoM (Access to Memory)

AtoM (Access to Memory) is a web-based, open source, standards-based application for archival description and access. AtoM was originally built with support from the International Council on Archives to encourage broader adoption of international standards for archival description across institutions. AtoM is a dynamic open source application with a broad user base who work together to continually improve and enhance the software to the benefit of the whole community.

Our catalogue is made available via the St George’s Archives & Special Collections website: https://archives.sgul.ac.uk/. AtoM allows users to type keywords into the search box located at the top of the banner, or they can explore the collections by browsing via collection, people and organisations, archival institutions, functions, subjects, places or digital objects. The catalogue homepage also displays the most popular items that have been searched for that week, which provides a glimpse into the interests of our researchers.

Each individual post mortem is being catalogued according to international standards and a summary of each will be produced, providing searchable keyword access. The information being captured in the catalogue includes the name of the patient, occupation, gender, date of admission, date of death, the physicians and surgeons who attended the case, a transcription of the diseases affecting the patient, and notes from the medical and post mortem examinations.

Example post mortem catalogue record

The catalogue data from the Opening Up the Body project will be imported from spreadsheets into AtoM.  The digitised images will be linked to the individual catalogue entry, allowing researchers to access the collection remotely and therefore increase access to the collection and also preserve the physical volumes.

Subject access points are being identified using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) database (https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search), which will allow researchers to search and identify cases by disease and anatomy group. For example, at the click of a button a researcher will be able to identify post mortems that were related to diseases of the respiratory system, or patients that were admitted to the hospital following an injury.

Name access points are also being created for every surgeon and physician of St George’s Hospital who treated the patients or undertook the post mortem examinations, and will be linked to their authority record in the catalogue. The authority record will list information such as dates of existence and a biographical history of the key figures in the history of St George’s.

Visualising the post-mortems

Word cloud of commonly found words in a post-mortem volume from 1887 using Wordclouds.com (https://www.wordclouds.com/)

As we catalogue the material, we are collecting a large amount of data. In order to be able to get the most out of this incredibly rich source, we’ve modified our cataloguing templates to structure the data so that we can both export it into AtoM in the required and easily readable format, and to make it easier to properly explore that data and gain new insights into the material.

This also requires standardising the data, especially when it comes to the names of diseases. These can change over time: tuberculosis, for instance, may be called tuberculosis or phthisis, and we want to make sure we can track these conditions, regardless of what they’re called (this of course is not always that simple, but that may be a subject for another blog post!).

Packed circles showing groups of diseases in 1864, using Flourish (https://app.flourish.studio/templates)

There are plenty of free, open-source tools available, many developed specifically for digital humanities. Visualisation tools are great for immediate visual effect, for telling stories and for drawing attention to details that might otherwise be missed, or might be worth more in-depth exploration – why does the word ‘India’ appear so frequently in the word cloud above, for instance? Why did so many people die of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases? Visualisations are nothing new, of course – John Snow (who at one time worked at St George’s) managed to figure out the cause of the 1854 cholera outbreak by mapping the cases.

Line graph showing instances of death from cholera during the 1854 cholera epidemic in London, using Flourish

Sankey diagram illustrating distribution of diseases by gender in 1864, using Flourish

As we continue cataloguing and collecting more data, we can begin to explore changes over time and ask more questions – did people live longer? How do their occupations change? How do medical advances affect the kind of diseases featured in the post mortems? How do the post mortems themselves change? Presenting the material like this not only allows our readers insights into the contents of the post mortem records, but it also gives us a chance to reflect on the details of our work, and on the ways in which we are dealing with the data as we go along. More importantly, though, we can use these visualisations to bring the material to life – so to say!

We are only just starting, so look out for more exciting visualisations as we delve deeper into the post mortems! And feel free to get in touch with us at archives@sgul.ac.uk – we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about the project and accessing the material.

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If you are interested receiving updates from the Library and the St George’s Archives project, you can subscribe to the Library Blog using the Follow button or click here for further posts from the Archives.

New Library website launched

St George’s Library website has now been integrated into the new University website, launched on 30^th September. The site guides key audiences, including current students, teaching staff, researchers and our NHS partners to the information they need about library services.

There’s no need to immediately update your bookmarks, as our old address http://library.sgul.ac.uk should automatically redirect to our new address:

https://www.sgul.ac.uk/about/our-professional-services/information-services/library

To navigate to the library from the SGUL website homepage, just move to the footer at the bottom and click on ‘Library’. Familiar links to key resources such as Hunter, Databases and LibGuides remain on our landing page.

We hope you find our new website useful. If you have any comments about the new website or suggestions for ways we can improve it, please email the project team.

Copyright: What NHS staff need to know

The rules regarding copyright and knowing what you can legally copy can be confusing. Questions about copyright might arise when considering whether a journal club can print multiple copies of an article for members? Whether staff are allowed to distribute printed or digital copies of articles to other colleagues? How much of a book are you legally allowed to photocopy?

The CLA Licence for NHS staff in England is the licence that provides the terms for what NHS staff are allowed to photocopy, scan and share from most copyrighted print and digital works.

What is covered by the licence?

The licence allows individuals to make copies from almost everything which has been purchased, subscribed or donated to the NHS in England. There are a small number of excluded works, if you’re unsure if a work is covered by the licence then the best way to check is via the CLA’s Check Permissions tool https://www.cla.co.uk/index.php/nhs-england-licence

Who is covered by the licence?

The licence covers all staff working for or contracted by the NHS including primary and acute care staff, public health staff employed by local authorities, those working for DHSC arms’-lengths bodies and special health authorities, and those providing NHS-commissioned care such as Hospice staff. The licence also covers HEI students and staff who are on temporary or permanent placements with the NHS in England.

What can be copied under the licence?

• 2 articles from a single journal issue or several articles from an issue if it is dedicated to a particular theme.
• 1 chapter or 5% of a book (whichever is the greatest)
• There are no restrictions on how many copies you can make, and you can make copies of copies too.
• Digital copies can be stored – but they must be kept on your own PC or a secure network which you may share with colleagues.
• Only single paper copies can be made for patients or carers

What can I share?

You may share print or digital copies with work colleagues covered by the licence including via email.

What else do I need to know?

You are obligated to protect the rights of copyright owners, to always copy within the limits of the licence and to always acknowledge sources of information when writing.

More information about copyright can be found at the Copyright Licencing Agency website

A poster is also available for staff to display next to photocopiers.

Or if you have any questions regarding the copying and sharing of copyrighted works for NHS staff please contact the NHS Liaison Team liaison@sgul.ac.uk

Library ♥ Nursing

Continuing the Library’s new series of monthly promotions – Library Loves – this May we are taking a closer look at our Nursing Resources – in particular those that will support our Nurses and Midwives through revalidation.

Content:
Key Websites
Books
Journals
Apps
Other Key Resources
Further information

From April 2016, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) now requires that nurses and midwives undertake a process of revalidation every 3 years to maintain their registration with the NMC. This process has been introduced to encourage a sharing and reflective culture, to promote good practice and raise awareness of the professional standards expected of nurses and midwives and to strengthen public confidence in these professions.

We’ve put together this brief guide to essential revalidation information resources, including those available through St George’s Library, to support you through the revalidation process. Many of the resources will also be helpful to students or other healthcare professionals who are looking to develop their reflective writing skills, or those about to qualify who are looking to get a head start.

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Key Websites:

Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC): Revalidation
http://revalidation.nmc.org.uk/
The NMC microsite covers all the essential information and guidance to the Revalidation process. You can find out more about the requirements, download the NMC guidance booklet, forms and templates and learn from fellow professionals who have already been through the revalidation process.

Royal College of Nursing (RCN): Revalidation
https://www.rcn.org.uk/professional-development/revalidation
The RCN has professional development pages dedicated to the revalidation process, including guidance on the requirements, case studies of a variety of professionals and advice on developing and keeping a portfolio of evidence.

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Books available from St George’s Library

We have a great collection of texts to support you in your professional development and reflective practice. We’ve picked a handful of these below, but don’t forget you can also search Hunter for further inspiration and similar titles.

Click on the images below to view the catalogue record for the book, where you’ll be able to check and see if there is a copy available on the shelves. If the title is available as an eBook, follow the links beneath the image to view them online.

Access Instructions:

If you are using a library computer or laptop, you should click the onsite link to view the book (there’s no login required).

If you are offsite:

• SGUL students/staff should click the SGUL offsite link and log in with their SGUL username and password.
• NHS staff should use the NHS offsite link and log in with their OpenAthens login details. If you don’t have an OpenAthens login, you can self-register here: http://openathens.nice.org.uk/

    
Click here for onsite access                   Click here for onsite access
Offsite : SGUL users log in here            Offsite : SGUL users log in here
Offsite : NHS users log in here              Offsite : NHS users log in here

    
Click here for onsite access                      Click here for onsite access
Offsite : SGUL users log in here               Offsite : SGUL users log in here
Offsite : NHS users log in here                 Offsite : NHS users log in here

    

    

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Journals

You might also be interested in keeping up-to-date with more recent discussion on Revalidation.

Take a look at some of the Hunter searches below to see some of the most recent articles for the following topics:

• Revalidation
• Reflective Practice in Nursing
• Career Development in Nursing

To access full-text articles in these searches offsite, please be aware you’ll need to login with your SGUL login details. NHS staff are only able to view these using a Library computer. If you are an NHS user and would like a login for the Library PCs, please see a member of staff at the Library helpdesk.

NHS users have access to thousands of electronic journals via their OpenAthens login; you can browse the titles by visiting the A-Z list hosted by NICE. Make sure you have logged in before searching to ensure you see the full content you have access to.

Some key titles we recommend keeping up-to-date with include:

Nursing Standard
Nursing Management
British Journal of Nursing
British Journal of Midwifery

These are all available via the University and the NHS OpenAthens routes.

If you don’t have the time to search online and would rather browse a journal/magazine by hand you can always check out our limited print collection of journals. These are held in the silent study section of the Library and a selection are on display next to the Research Enquiries Desk. Our nursing print journals include:

Nursing Standard
Nursing Times
Pediatric Nursing
Nursing Management
Midwives

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Apps

St George’s Library regularly explores and reviews mobile applications and resources that our users may find useful. A few that you may be interested in are:

Shift Calendar Apps –  time management apps to help those with shift based roles keep track of their complex work schedules.

Forest: Stay Focused  –  An app to help you keep focused on your task if you are easily distracted
Dynamed Plus – A Point of Care resource app – full content available to St George’s  NHS staff.
NICE BNF and BNFc – available with an NHS OpenAthens

Baby Buddy – An app for expectant and new mothers, and healthcare workers assisting them.

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Other Key Resources

Nursing and Midwifery Council (2015) The Code: professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, London: NMC.
View The Code: professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses – PDF

Royal College of Nursing (2015) NMC revalidation: next steps: an update from the RCN on NMC revalidation, plus frequently asked questions, London: RCN.
View  RCN document on NMC revalidation – website

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Further information:

For help in viewing or downloading eBooks or online journals, pop along to the Research Enquiries Desk in the Quiet Study Area of the Library, Mon-Fri 11am-4pm.

If you are an NHS user and are having problems with your OpenAthens account, please contact your OpenAthens administrator:
Beth Jackson
eljackso@sgul.ac.uk
020 8725 5433

We’ll be hosting another Pop-Up Library where we’ll be happy to help with your enquiries about any of the Library’s services and resources:

Tuesday 24th May – 12-2pm outside Ingredients restaurant, 1st floor Lanesborough Wing.

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St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will be celebrating International Nurses Day on 12 May, between 13:00-17:00 in the Hyde Park room, and handing out awards for nurses who have made an outstanding contribution to patient care.

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Podcasts from Nature

Click here to see the list of latest podcasts from Nature

Includes links to:

• American Journal of Gastroenterology podcast – Differential Effects of FODMAPs
• PSPod from CPT: Pharmacometrics & System Pharmacology – Mathematical Modeling and Diabetes
• JID Skinpod – don’t sweat it! – Contains latest basic and clinical research in cutaneous biology and skin disease, featuring highlighted content from the top journal in dermatology.
• BRAINPODS from Neuropsychopharmacology – These 10-min podcasts welcome lead authors of high-impact papers to describe their work and answer the questions about its broad significance for the scientific community as well as the lay public.

JISC releases “Roles and Responsibilities for Staff Using Images for Teaching and Research” Guide

JISC Digital Media have released a guide on the the use of images for teaching and research.

It contains information on copyright, a process chart for users of digital images, guidance on the stages in the clearance of images for use in teaching and research, and more.

Wellcome Trust makes 100,000 images freely available

The Wellcome Trust has made over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, and early photography freely available through Wellcome Images.

The images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence. This means that they can be used for commercial or personal purposes, with an acknowledgement of the original source (Wellcome Library, London). All of the images from the historical collections can be used free of charge.  You can find more info about the release of images here.

We found this gem by searching for ‘Smallpox’ in the ‘historical’ collection.  A portrait of Edward Jenner by John Raphael Smith. Could that be Blossom in the background?

Edward Jenner. Pastel by John Raphael Smith.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London

The Library webpages contains a useful list of image collections that you can use.

URL: http://www.sgul.ac.uk/about-st-georges/services/library/databases/images-videos-and-recordings

JISC Digital Media – a valuable resource for advice and support

JISC Digital Media exists to help the UK’s FE and HE communities embrace and maximise the use of digital media in education. The website provides a wealth of resources, advice and online tutorials for using a range of media including still and moving images and audio. They also provide a free Helpdesk service.