Making the rounds: Hospital staff get library cards

Our librarians keep ending up in the hospital!

No need to send flowers, though—they’re doing just fine. It’s all been in the name of sharing resources and access to information.

Over the past year, library staff have been making repeat visits to Rush Oak Park Hospital, 520 S. Maple Ave., to sign up hospital staff for their own library cards. And so far, halfway through this September’s Library Card Sign-Up Month, almost 70 hospital employees have undergone the procedure.

One, a Lombard resident who has worked at Rush Oak Park Hospital for 14 years, told us what having her own Oak Park Public Library card means to her.

Marina Antes (not pictured), a discharge liaison and education coordinator, says using her card to gain access to the library’s digital offerings “has opened up a lot more articles to me than Google Scholar.”

Because she’s a non-faculty hospital staff member, Antes doesn’t have access to Rush University Medical Center’s library. But, as someone who works for a local business, she is eligible for an Oak Park Public Library card.

With her public library’s Article Search feature, Antes can search the online catalog and read full-text research articles and literature reviews from peer-reviewed journals like American Journal of Nursing and Journal of Clinical Nursing. She’s used them to inform her own projects, from developing new patient discharge processes to educating hospital staff.

“As nurses, we should always be learning and be able to access knowledge and learning,” Antes says. “It helps our patients on the back end, through all these resources that are open to us.”