Coming in on a Saturday was tough I’m not going to lie.
I’ve been a wee bit sleep deprived for the past 6 weeks thanks to the arrival
of my baby daughter and I’ve really come to appreciate those precious weekend
mornings when I don’t have to get out of bed early. But duty calls and I got
myself spruced up, in the car and into the education centre in good time ready
to meet and greet the general public. And I’m glad I did. Straight away you
could tell there was a positive vibe in the room and it was evident that the
members of staff who had made the effort to come in were keen and excited to
demonstrate the work that they do.
Visitors
to the open day were given interactive tours of some of the wards in the hospital,
plus a viewing of displays in the education centre from various departments within
the trust. We focused our display on the literature search service that
the library provides. As I’d said in my previous post, we really wanted to
share with the public some of the important work that they might not necessarily
associate the library with being involved in. So, with this in mind one of our
display boards proudly boasted some of the projects that have been in the media
and which the library found evidence to support. Things like;
·
The trial of blue plates to encourage elderly
patients to eat more.
·
My Trusty Little Sunflower Cream
·
Publication of a Speech Therapy handbook,
written by staff at the hospital
·
New, better quality uniforms for hospital staff
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| Our display for the day |
There was a board that emphasised our role in supporting
the hospital staff to help achieve evidence-based patient care and another with
a visual guide to how the literature search service works... very exciting
stuff! As a way of demonstrating that we are a modern, high tech library, we
also used a laptop to display a looped presentation that mostly repeated the
information on the boards, but with some funky animations and eye-catching
graphs.
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| Making it a bit more interesting |
Before the visitors arrived Peter Hill our benevolent
Chief Executive, walked around and spoke informally to each person manning a
stand. He asked me what it was I planned to talk to people about during the day
(possibly worried that I wasn’t going to bore the good folk with mundane
library stuff) and he seemed genuinely delighted that I would be highlighting
the evidence finding work that we do and that I was using some very high
profile projects as examples. This point of the morning also gave me a nice
opportunity to network with other members of staff and a chance to sell our
services to those who hadn’t already used the library.
During the afternoon I also got a chance to meet Nick
Marsden the trust Chairman and had a really positive discussion about how the
library finds evidence for staff. Not only did he seem very interested, but
he’s also promised to make contact about some ways we might be able to help
him.
The first visitors arrived in the education centre around
9:30 and from then on it was a steady stream of people until 14:30. Overall the
open day attracted over 170 visitors, not too bad really! Each and every member of
the public that I spoke to had nothing but good things to say about, not only
the open day, but the staff and the hospital in general and you got a real
sense of local pride.
I really enjoyed chatting to people who you wouldn’t
normally get a chance to discuss the work done by the library with. I feel
confident that those who I spoke to came away with a different view of the
library and hopefully an appreciation of the role we play in the trust. For
those who assumed that we supply fiction books for patients, it was a nice
surprise for them to hear that some of the work we’ve done has influenced the
care patients receive and how our service benefits the staff and students. The
fact that we were involved with ‘My Trusty Little Sunflower Cream’ and the blue
plates for elderly patients initiatives really seemed to impress people and
again, I think this had a really positive impact. I certainly received some
very nice comments and I’m sure it’s not just because they were in a good mood
and wanted to be polite.
I was also interviewed by our very own Radio Odstock. As the microphone was thrust in my face I had a flashback to the last time that I was on the radio. On that occasion I had inadvertently
slipped into a strange accent of no real origin, so needless to say I was
determined not to let this happen again. The interview went fine, with no
unexplained voice changes and I reckon I made the library sound pretty impressive,
which it is of course.
One of the personal highlights of the day was getting to
chat with Michael Beck who was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for
services to charity. As you may or may not know, Michael is 80 years old and
has been pushing around his trusty wheelbarrow, “Wally” for 10 years,
collecting over £175,000 in donations for our hospital charity 'Stars Appeal'. He has become a
familiar figure around Salisbury during regular collections at shops and pubs,
the livestock market and the hospital, in addition to going along to support
annual charity events like the Tidworth 10k and Walk for Wards. Michael had
received treatment at this hospital for blood and prostate cancer and he was
full of praise for the care he received and immensely proud to have raised so much
money for the hospital. We talked about his upcoming visit to Buckingham Palace
and his war medals that he wants to get polished up for his meeting with the
Queen. It was a short but lovely conversation with such a nice, funny and
selfless man.
The open day has been deemed a success from the trust’s
point of view, receiving glowing reviews from the visitors on the day and
positive feedback from the staff who attended. I thought all of the staff
members on day really did this trust proud and it is credit to them that on a
weekend morning, standing around for hours with your back and feet aching, they
all remained courteous, friendly and good humoured. Well done!
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| Spreading the good word with staff and the public |
The official trust press release of the day can be found here.
From a library perspective I would certainly say it was
worthwhile doing. At the end of the day, the public are not the ones who will
use the library but it was good to show people behind the scenes and open their
eyes to the work we do. It makes me feel proud of where I work and enhances my
belief that what we do is important.
Until next time…
