Case study: NT Health
Koha, Interdocs and GratisNet in Northern Territory Health
The Northern Territory’s Health Library Network signed up for Prosentient System’s document delivery system and were impressed with the after sales service. “We found Edmund to be very good to work with” explained Resources Management Librarian, Ruby Lindberg. “No matter how many times we rang he was always patient and helpful. After sales service and support is very important to us because we don’t have the technical in-house knowledge of the applications to do it ourselves”. Their good experience with Interdocs soon led the library to join GratisNet, and then to take up the hosted Koha Library Management System.
Australia’s NT covers an area of 1.32 million square kilometers, an area equal to the combined areas of France, Spain and Italy. The NT Department of Health’s five branch library network helps support a medical service for the sparsely distributed population of 226,000 people. From the main library in Darwin to remote Nhulunbuy on Gove Peninsular in the east and down south into the red heart with branches at Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, clinicians, nurses, administrators and managers depend on local library branches and mobile devices to provide vital decision support.
The library’s role is to support patient and public health care through the delivery of evidence-based information and knowledge, resources and services for clinical decision-support, public health programs, education and training, health technology assessment, policy, management and administration. In addition to departmental staff, library users include students specialising in tropical medicine and indigenous health from the Flinders NT Medical Program. The Program is run by Flinders University School of Medicine, based in Darwin with campuses at Alice Springs, Katherine and Nhulunbuy.
Textbooks sourced locally or from interstate libraries are still delivered to far-flung places in the department’s mail bag, but increasingly the library is the gateway for access to electronic resources. The library’s extensive specialist online database subscriptions and membership of the GratisNet inter-library loans network, means that any relevant publication can usually be found for a medical service that operates under some of the most challenging conditions anywhere.
As the library’s patrons become increasingly tech savvy and want point-of-care access to DynaMed on their smart phones, Ruby knows the library needs to continue to change. Fortunately the library is equipped to keep up-to-date with developments in technology. With access to iPads and WiFi networks in three libraries, the library is experimenting with QR codes, RSS feeds and other methods of communication.
But Ruby observes that where once the librarian’s role was to do the research for patrons, it is now more about showing the patrons themselves how to use the available tools. Library staff can now be found running training courses on evidence-based medicine, how to use new technologies and how to make the best use of a dizzying number of databases.
But, If there is one piece of technology that is still missing Ruby Lindberg believes, it is a good unified discovery tool: a search engine that can operate across all holdings physical and electronic, and that doesn't cost the earth.