The hospital library spotlight shines on St. Luke's Cornwall

The latest service offered to doctors, nurses, and administrators at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital is the option to borrow an LCD projector and laptop for educational presentations on campus and off. This innovative offering helps underscore why CEO Allan Atzrott has such high praise for Twila Snead and her role in leading the medical library into the electronic information age. While recognizing that doctors relish the comfortable chairs, traditional feel, and the quiet reading space, she has progressively implemented a library web site and the delivery of virtual services, while not neglecting helpful, friendly, personalized service. It makes, in the words of vascular surgeon, Dr. David Harrison, a “wonderful little library, wonderful place to read, available 24 hours with current journals and extensive electronic research resources.”

While on a recent visit, we discussed the growth of her electronic journal collection, some 60 individual titles alone. Twila commented that her experiments with e-texts were not as successful, so she has reduced those (while continuing the SENYLRC StatRef collection) and added more online journals such as the Comprehensive Nursing and Allied Health Reference collection (100 titles), Natural Medicines, E-Medicine and other Hospital focused databases to complement the statewide hospital online journal collection. She is also about to implement a federated searching tool.

Active in the hospital on Medical Education and Patient Education Committees, Twila personally orients her physicians to using online resources, instructs nurses, and has partnered with local public libraries in offering Medline Plus classes. She is also active with SENYLRC, serving on ERAC, and on the HLSP Advisory Committee which she chaired from 02-04. A pro-active participant in the Hospital Library Marketing & Promotion group projects, she also writes a regular column for her hospital medical staff newsletter.

Gifted with technological skills and willing to try anything to promote her services, Twila has developed the library to its key position serving both campuses, Cornwall and Newburgh, with a strong commitment to communication and innovation. Twila states however, that “her best resource is the collaboration between libraries in the SE region and the support of the SE staff.”

By Patricia Carroll-Mathes, Hospital Library Program Manager

Southeastern News Online is published bi-monthly by SENYLRC staff.