Professional paper
Organization, the present and the future of hospital libraries in Croatia
Tanja Sušec
Gordana Ramljak
Damira Kraljević
Abstract
Hospital libraries in Croatia belong into the group of medical libraries as well as special libraries; they are located in health care institutions and serve only health care professionals. Croatian hospitals generally do not have a library or consumer health information service for patients. In addition, consumer health information and popular medical works in the Croatian language are insufficient or rare. In the world, there are three types of libraries in health care facilities: medical hospital library for health care professionals, hospital library for patients, and a combination of the first two – a hospital library for both medical staff and patients. Creation and organization of special holdings for patients comprising monographs, serials and other information in print or e-format is a very important task, which will surely contribute to better health and cultural education of the Croatian population. Hospital librarians need support of their patrons – health care workers, but also of fellow-librarians in public and school libraries. In our opinion, there will be no major and significant changes in the near future (primarily due to financial reasons) with regard to opening of hospital libraries only for patients. Since the translation of IFLA “Guide lines for libraries serving hospital patients and the elderly and disabled in long-term care facilities” has just been published in Croatia, we do hope that the health care system in Croatia will follow the trends in the world. Hospital librarians think that a combined type of hospital library is the best acceptable solution in Croatia for serving health care professionals and patients with their families wherever it may be applied.
Keywords
medical libraries; hospital libraries; patient information; consumer health
Hrčak ID:
80984
URI
Publication date:
8.10.2010.
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