摘要：After a reduction in full-time equivalents, 2 libraries in large teaching hospitals and 2 libraries in small community hospitals in a western US statewide health system saw opportunity for expansion through a regional reorganization. Despite a loss of 2/3 of the professional staff and a budgetary decrease of 27% over the previous 3 years, the libraries were able to grow business, usage, awareness, and collections through organizational innovation and improved efficiency. This paper describes the experience—including process, challenges, and lessons learned—of an organizational shift to regionalized services, collections, and staffing. Insights from this process may help similar organizations going through restructuring. The libraries in the Oregon region of Providence Health & Services (PH&S) found themselves at a turning point with the departure of their two library managers. With the decision to replace the two librarians with a regional director of libraries, the groundwork was laid for a re-visioning of library services in the entire region. This case study describes the steps undertaken to bring the new vision to life. The notion of combining library staffs and resources into regional or system-wide bodies is not new to hospital librarianship. In their 2006 article, Thibodeau and Funk found that 1989–2006 “survey data support[ed] reported trends of consolidation of hospitals and hospital libraries and additions of new services” 1 . Yet a literature scan conducted in 2014 revealed no articles describing such transformation processes in hospital libraries. While lacking in descriptive studies of the centralization of health system libraries, the literature did provide some examples of integrating specific services 2 – 10 . The review of literature reinforced the authors' belief that sharing the PH&S experience would be useful to other health system libraries working to improve and expand services, while facing staffing and budgetary challenges.
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