Bye-bye Britain: How will ‘Brexit’ affect Medical Librarianship?

The national extremists have won the battle. The UK is going to leave the EU. Labour laws, environmental standards, human rights will all be weakened. ‘Now the Tories are going to bring back slavery’, I said to a Welsh colleague. ‘No, serfdom’, she replied. I feel sorry for my friends and colleagues in the UK. And for myself and my wife as we watch our British pension plans and our house in London losing value.

But how is ‘Brexit’ going to affect our profession?

The UK has, so far, been one of the nations that set standards in medical librarianship. In future I’m afraid that all kinds of academic and professional exchange and joint activities will become more difficult. Switzerland, too, was penalised by the EU for that ‘mass immigration’ referendum in 2014 by being kicked out of Erasmus. But at least Switzerland has made an effort to replicate Erasmus using national funding. Access to EU research schemes is a big issue for a society built on knowledge and skills. And it is hard to imagine any UK government would show commitment comparable to that of Switzerland in this field.

Given the enormous contribution UK colleagues have made to medical librarianship over a long period of time, we medical librarians need to discuss how we can help them maintain their current standards. As a professional body, EAHIL must keep an eye on the development, and we will act in solidarity – just as we did with our motion against the threatened closure of ZB Med in Germany at the Seville conference.

EAHIL Motion in Support of ZB Med

The following motion was proposed to the General Assembly of EAHIL on June 10th, 2016 in support of ZB Med:

‘Medical librarians all over Europe have been shocked and dismayed about the news that funding for the ZB Med will be withdrawn, and the library reduced from its current national and international rôle to that of just a faculty library within three years.
ZB Med is the second largest medical library worldwide after the NLM, and libraries internationally rely on its document supply service. Much of the collection of ZB Med is not held elsewhere in Europe or elsewhere. Beyond collection building, ZB Med’s search tools provide access to content not indexed anywhere else; and the library supports researchers with publishing advice and an OA publishing platform.
Medical librarians organised in EAHIL recommend that ZB Med should be kept as a national and international service, and that an adequate and stable funding stream should be re-established.’

EAHIL Workshop 2019 to come to Bern

The EAHIL board decided tonight (June 6th, 2016) to award the 2019 workshop to the Swiss medical libraries. It will be held in Bern from June 18th to 20th. Gerhard Bissels, in charge of medical libraries at Bern university, and Tomas Allen, WHO librarian, Geneva, together presented the bid on behalf of all Swiss medical libraries to the EAHIL board. It is the first time an EAHIL conference or workshop will be hosted in Switzerland.