The Kaitlin Atkinson Family Resource Library
Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa
Ontario, Canada
The Kaitlin Atkinson Family Resource Library was established with a generous donation of $30,000 Canadian, collected in a trust fund for Kaitlin Atkinson, a former cardiac patient at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). Kaitlin, one of triplets, was treated at CHEO for idiopathic pulmonary hypertension, and died shortly after double heart-lung transplant surgery in 1993.
The Atkinson family wanted to help support other families using CHEO and generously donated the remaining funds in Kaitlin’s trust to family-centered projects. The hospital’s Family Forum Committee (composed of 80% family members and 20% staff) identified two projects to help parents at CHEO. One of these projects was the establishment of the Kaitlin Atkinson Family Resource Library. In 1994, Kaitlin’s parents and sisters were present at the Library’s dedication ceremony.
The Library. Since it’s opening, the Library has doubled in floor space to approximately 350 square feet. At the opening there were almost as many teddy bears as books, but now the library has close to 800 books. Material is provided in Canada’s two official languages: English and French.
The Family Resource Library, located on the first floor of the hospital, next to the medical library, is open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Friday. After-hours service is provided to families by the medical library staff, on an as-needed basis. Email and phone messages can also be left after hours.
Services. The Kaitlin Atkinson Family Resource Library provides a number of information services for families:
   
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| The Kaitlin Atkinson Family Resource Library provides a number of information services for families. |
- A comprehensive collection of pediatric consumer health resources, including books, videos, articles, and pamphlets.
- Support group information.
- Information on traditional and complementary health care.
- Database searching using pediatric, medical, nursing, and allied health databases.
- Internet access to worldwide pediatric linkages, including the Library’s own web page with many bookmarked sites (see below).
- Preparation of information packages for families, described below.
- Trained volunteers to research specific requests.
- Access to additional consumer health information, ordered through the medical library.
- Bob’s Biblios, a collection of over 50 bibliographies prepared by library staff, described below.
- A Media Room in which families can watch health-related videos, use the computers, and/or read quietly.
Staffing and Volunteers. The Family Library is staffed by 16 specially trained volunteer library assistants and a coordinator from the adjoining medical library. The coordinator (0.9 FTE) provides consistency and support to the volunteer staff. The coordinator is also the liaison between the medical/health care staff in the hospital and the Family Resource Library.
Volunteer staff members take on their own individual projects to help run the library. Examples of these projects include:
- Developing policies and procedures;
- Providing clinical outreach;
- Serving as web master;
- Managing overdue materials: and
- Maintaining the vertical file.
Each Library staff member sits on the Library Advisory Committee and attends the monthly meetings where everyday decisions and policies are made. This has helped to keep volunteer staff members well informed, as well as provided them the opportunity to participate as decision-makers.
Information Packages. Trained volunteers interview family members regarding specific health information questions they may have. Based on this interview, volunteers prepare individualized information packages, which include printed medical/nursing/lay health texts, information from international pediatric databases, and electronic text from authoritative Internet sites. The Family Resource Library serves all of Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. Information requests can be phoned in, and information packages can be mailed, if necessary, to a family who does not live in Ottawa.
Web Page/ Internet Use. In 1997, a Library volunteer developed a web page for the Family Library. This effort increased the area served by the library. The Library staff have received support and computer/Internet training from the hospital’s information systems department. As a result, the volunteer staff learned how to develop and evaluate Internet links and has bookmarked a large number of useful sites on the Library’s web page (www.cheo.on.ca/english/2020.html). The staff periodically check links and bookmarks and suggest new ones. They strive to provide relevant, authoritative, and current material. The volunteer staff have become ambassadors of the Library and its web page.