I saw this toolkit during the poster sessions at MLA and I think it is pretty neat. This toolkit is from the Hospital Library Subcommittee of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine/New England Region and it has sample mission statements, goals and objectives, annual reports, a value use library calculator, means of capturing and presenting statistics to hospital administrators, library scope of service checklist and a bibliography on promoting hospital librarianship.

Basically it has a bunch of goodies that hospital librarians should definitely take advantage of and use. I particularly like the value calculator. The example they link to is a public library value calculator, but there are instructions and information for changing it and adapting for your specific library. We have to communicate our value to people who don't understand librarian speak and the best way to do that is to break it down to dollars and cents. It is all about money.

The Sample Goals and Objectives section is helpful. But the one thing I would love to see in this toolkit (or anywhere) is more information on dealing with creating those darn Performance Improvement Plans which I think go hand and hand with a library's goals and objectives. I am forever trying to come up with a performance improvement plan that means something to me and the powers that be. My PIs must be something that can be measured by numbers and support the goal and mission of the library and hospital.

You can find the toolkit at http://nnlm.gov/ner/services/hosp_lib_tookits.html or from the Hospital Library Section Wiki at http://mla-hls.wikispaces.com/.

By the way, the HLS Wiki has a lot of other cool stuff for librarians, so don't forget to use it as a resource and add your helpful information for others to learn from and use.

Labels: Hospital Libraries