Book Review

Abstract

A. Booth & G. Walton, Managing knowledge in health services ( eds ). London: Library Association Publishing , 2000 . ISBN 1-85604-321-5 . 357 pp., £45.00 (£36 to LA members) . Many readers will be familiar with Michael Carmel's ‘Health Care Librarianship and Information Work’,1 which since 1995 has been the standard British textbook on the subject. With the enormous changes in health services—and consequently in the provision of health care information—that have taken place since then, Andrew Booth and Graham Walton have set out, aided by an authoritative team of contributors, to assemble a book that reflects these changes and offers library and information service (LIS) professionals guidance in how to develop their roles accordingly. The resulting work has a clear and logical structure, with three main sections. Part 1 is an overview of health services, mapping the health care landscape and the key features of health information within it. It identifies the latter as being information users, libraries, information providers, and consumer health information, devoting a chapter to each in turn. Where possible it adopts a global perspective, while relying heavily on examples drawn from UK practice. Parts 2 and 3 have a more practical ‘how to do it’ approach. Part 2 examines health information resources in greater detail, discussing the principles underpinning the organization and management of these resources and offering well-researched advice on how to turn principles into practice. Part 3 concentrates on the skills needed to make effective use of the knowledge base of health information. Here, more than anywhere else, the reader becomes aware of the greatest change from the world described by Carmel in 1995: then, evidence-based health care had yet to make a significant impact on LIS, receiving only two pages of coverage in his introduction. Now, it has become a central tenet of health care practice: as a result it places effective health knowledge management at the heart of things and dominates our present-day thinking. It is no coincidence that more than half the chapters have been written by staff of the Information Resources Section in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at Sheffield University, a unit that has been at the forefront of the move towards better evidence-based health information practices. The book bears the hallmark of strong editorial guidance. Each chapter follows a standard format that includes an introduction, a conclusion and helpful key points, and case studies are employed to good effect throughout. All the contributions rely heavily on a thorough review of the literature, with references that are gathered into a 50-page bibliography. If there is a weakness, it lies in the extensive references to Website addresses throughout the book. Many readers will already be familiar with the ephemeral nature of Websites that disappear (or at least change without an adequate redirection facility), and while this is ultimately a criticism of those who run the Websites rather than those seeking to use them, this feature of the book will be most vulnerable to rapid obsolescence. A publisher's claim that a book is essential reading is usually to be taken with a large pinch of salt. This book is an exception: the subject it covers, the approach it adopts, and the quality of the individual contributions, together enable it to justify that much-abused claim. It is exemplary in its presentation of evidence-based information practice. If you have or aspire to managerial responsibility for health service information, buy it, read it, and apply its lessons.