Over the past 25 years I have undertaken a range of activities pertaining to public, special and health libraries at both the institutional and professional levels. As the Policy and Research Librarian at the South Australian Public Libraries Branch I exercised responsibility for a multimillion dollar acquisitions budget on behalf of over 100 public libraries across the state. In that capacity I conducted the first ever formal evaluation and tender for the supply of books to the South Australian public library system. I also drafted the Public Libraries Branch’s first collections management policy which entailed reconciling the needs of the more than 100 libraries. The final policy was adopted by the State Libraries Board for the public library system. The greater part of my career has been in health libraries. I have edited the first and third editions of the ALIA Guidelines for Australian health libraries. In 1999 I prepared the Memorandum of Understanding for the South Australian Human Services Libraries Consortium, whereby the Consortium was officially recognised as the forum for health libraries in South Australia. During 2007-08 I was heavily involved in the creation of the SA Health Libraries Portfolio group and the negotiations for establishing portfolio wide access to a range of core online health information resources. During the course of the last twenty years I have planned four new hospital libraries, either as relocations or greenfield sites, in Canberra and Adelaide. I have written or edited various publications including a short checklist on service agreements in Australian health libraries, articles on collection development, open access publishing, disaster planning and benchmarking in health libraries together with several submissions to governmental enquiries.
Articles
Towards E-health: national access to electronic health information, HLA News: National News Bulletin of Health Libraries Australia (2007)
Health Libraries Australia has made a sustained effort to advance the development of a national...
The economics of open access publishing in the sciences - recent reports for health librarians, HLA News: National Newsletter of Health Libraries Australia (2005)
Australian health librarians would be familiar with the general background to the origins of open...
Presentations
Implementing library service agreements: the experience of Australian health libraries (with Sue Rockliff), 10th Asia Pacific Special Health and Law Librarians Conference (2003)
There is little in the published literature on creating and implementing service agreements in libraries...
Reports
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Library Collection Management Policy (2009)
This Collection Management Policy contains guidelines for the development and management of the Library collections...
Library User Needs Analysis Report (2008)
In mid 2008 The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Library conducted a User Information Needs Analysis to...