The presentation will give a broad outline of devolved government within
Scotland since July 1999, when the first Scottish Parliament since the Act of
Union in 1707 was officially opened. The broad range of policy issues
which the Scottish Executive governs on will be emphasised, from Education to
Environment to Transport to Rural Affairs to Justice to Health. The Scottish
Executive Information and Library Service supports Policy Makers in all these
areas, it is not only a Health Library! An overview will be given of the service
that we currently provide to Health Policy Makers, emphasising our situation as
a virtual service - we are based in one
building away from the Health Department. Our focus since July 2002 has been
on ensuring Health Policy Makers and the Information Providers who support and
advise them in their work have access to the best available evidence. We have
had to accomplish this on the whole via access to electronic information
resources. With the advent of the NHS e-Library in Scotland, our work in this
area has been made a great deal easier. However we still have to ensure access
to other sources not catered for by the NHS e-Library, for example consolidated
legislation required by Bill Teams in the Health Department, or Press Archives.
Providing access is not merely enough, we also conduct Literature Searches of
electronic and traditional resources, particularly important for policy makers
who do not have the time to search. For those who do wish to search resources
themselves we provide training. In the end it's all about time. Our alerts
service emails policy makers details of newspaper articles, journal articles and
other relevant material matching their specified keywords, enabling them to be
kept informed and alleviate the need for them to do so themselves. The future?
To undertake an information audit of the Health Department and the other seven
Departments! to ensure that our service is meeting users needs.
