THE library management team for the Harlow Healthcare Library, based at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, have won a coveted award in recognition of their contribution to modernising the library services available to staff on the hospital site.

Liz Hunwick, library services manager (pictured at the ceremony, left) and Sarah Lanney, library resources manager at Basildon Healthcare Library have been selected as joint winners of the 2019 Information Manager of the Year Award for the Knowledge and Information Management Awards 2019.

Sarah and Liz took over management of the library at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow, while maintaining management of Basildon Healthcare Library, in 2016. They have been recognised for their work including modernising library services; revamping resources; training and recruiting library staff; and rebranding and promoting library and information services to staff. They received the award at a ceremony in London last week.

Becca Parrott, clinical outreach librarian at Harlow Healthcare Library, on the Princess Alexandra Hospital site, nominated Sarah and Liz for the award.

She said: “Sarah and Liz have both consistently gone above and beyond for everyone using the library, their team and our profession, and I am incredibly pleased they are being recognised for this.

“They’ve shown dedication, tenacity and endurance, combined with the strategic prowess required to align Harlow Healthcare Library to national objectives such as Knowledge for Healthcare and the NHS Library Quality Assurance Framework (LQAF), whilst identifying and meeting the needs of our people.”

Sarah and Liz added: “We’re really honoured by this recognition from our peers for all of the hard work we’ve put into Harlow and Basildon healthcare libraries for the last few years.  

“We are proud of what we’ve achieved and even prouder of our teams for catching hold of the vision and sharing with us the job of improving access to evidence based health information in Essex.”

Andy Morris, chief medical officer at the trust, said: “Harlow Healthcare Library has grown into an effective library and knowledge service, supporting clinicians and managers in their work and underpinning the practice of evidence-based healthcare in the trust.
 
“The Harlow Healthcare Library team deserve a big thank you for their hard work in raising the quality of the service, which benefits not only our staff, but in the long term is a huge asset in the care of our patients.”

The accolades were awarded by CILIP Special Interest Groups the Knowledge and Information Management Group (K&IM) and the UK e-information Group (UKeiG).