Paul Gray and Morag Higginson

1. Scottish
Government
Library & Information
Service
Paul Gray and Morag Higgison

2. The Scottish Government
The devolved government for Scotland responsible for
matters concerning:
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 Economy
 Education
 Environment
 Health
 Housing
 Justice
 Rural affairs
 Transport
 Taxation

3. The Civil Service
Helps the government develop and implement its policies
and deliver public services. Civil servants are accountable to
Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament.
 The Scottish Government employs 5,648 FTE staff
 Led by the Permanent Secretary – Leslie Evans
 6 Directors-General responsible for 39 Directorates
 Directorates put policy into practice
 The Library is in the Digital Directorate
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4. The Library
We are 6 qualified librarians and 3 support staff based
in Edinburgh. We provide the following for all Scottish
Government staff:
 A range of demand-driven services and desktop
access to information resources to support
evidence-based policy development
 Training in collaborative tools, social media and
research skills
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5. Literature searching

6. Involves a systematic search of published literature
using a range of resources, including databases to find
books, journals, reports and conference proceedings
which relate to a specific research topic.
The purpose of literature searching is to source evidence
based information to assist the policy making process.
Literature searching

7.  Increases knowledge of the subject area
 Helps identify relevant work already done
 Prevents duplicating work already done
 Enables users to find ‘gaps’ in existing research
 Allows an understanding of the current state of knowledge
in the topic field
 Can be a strategy for gathering information
 Saves staff time
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Literature searching

9. Enquiry
service

14. eResources

15. Access to many key subject specific databases selected by
librarians to provide high quality information for Scottish
Government staff. Includes:
 Our discovery search – KandE
 Journal articles and publications from other eResources
 Full text and peer-reviewed content
 Books and ebooks
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eResources

19. Alerts and current
awareness

20.  The latest news
 Published research
 New publications
 Resources relevant to your job
is vital especially if involved with ongoing research
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Keeping up-to-date with…

27. Information sharing tools

30. Digital and searching skills
training

41. Paul Gray
@paulkgray
Morag Higgison
@MoragHiggison
Scottish Government Library blog
bit.ly/sglibrary