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Full Text
Keywords
Libraries, Corporate communications, Promotional methods, Partnership
Abstract
The National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) was highly commended in 2003 by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, for an awareness campaign delivered in autumn 2002. This article outlines the promotions activity leading up to the award and the achievements made since. The NeLH is now over three years old and has a regular user base of 120,000 users per month, with around 50 per cent of users making repeat visits within the month. A range of activities and tools has been devised to promote the service to the health community. Increasingly, the NeLH works in partnership with health librarians, mainly through the Digital Libraries Network, established during 2003. This collaborative approach has enabled a greater reach for marketing campaigns and offered economies of scale.
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The National electronic Library for Health
The National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) is a digital library aimed predominantly at, and funded specifically for, health professionals and managers in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Although most of the resources are openly available on the Internet to all, selected resources are licensed for NHS personnel only. The NeLH is based around a core collection of generalised evidence-based knowledge resources with links to commissioned specialised resources. Its role is to support evidence-based decisionmaking in healthcare through the provision and delivery of a focused knowledge base in a format convenient to health professionals, at the time and place of need (Turner, 2004a).
As an entirely electronic service, the NeLH has been designed to complement existing physical libraries. The aim is to concentrate on providing fast and easy electronic-only access to research evidence, clinical guidelines, and critically appraised resources, sometimes described as secondary and tertiary sources. Libraries across the health community offer access to the wider knowledge-base, such as primary research. The remit of health libraries is broader and the focus different to that of NeLH - for example, libraries offer face-to-face contact and localised services.
Setting the scene
The NHS is a large and complex organisation with around 1.2 million staff (Department...