Exciting updates from your digital library!
Monday, 31 March, 2025
The team behind The Knowledge Network are delighted to provide an update on the subscriptions available to health and social care staff in Scotland via the digital library.
During the last year, the team has been working hard to negotiate with suppliers and liaise with colleagues across NHS Scotland library services and NHS Education for Scotland - thank you to everyone who worked with us!
As a result, we have successfully secured access for the next three years to the broad range of evidence, books, databases, journals and medicines information that you need to provide quality care and develop professionally. We are also excited to share information about new resources which will now be included in our subscriptions.
In the last 12 months our users conducted roughly 570 searches and 1,568 page views per day on evidence summary resources, including BMJ Best Practice, DynaMed and ClinicalKey.
These services offer up to date, trustworthy evidence for use at the point of care. They also offer additional resources and services such as patient information, images and videos, and CPD tracking.
From April 2025 our users will also have access to the BMJ Best Practice Comorbidities Manager. This exciting new feature provides guidance on the treatment of acute conditions alongside a patient's pre-existing comorbidities. More guidance will soon be available on The Knowledge Network Evidence Summaries page.
Users will continue to have access to ProQuest eBook Central Health and Medicine collection including around 20,000 curated titles, as well as new editions coming soon! Including the brand-new 15th edition of The Maudsley prescribing guidelines in psychiatry due to be published in April 2025.
We have also concluded the annual Joint National eBook purchasing project, in collaboration with NHS Scotland territorial and special boards. This year we have 149 additional titles, requested by our users and selected in consultation with NHSS knowledge managers.
Browse all recent editions with our 2025 Books tag.
Our users conducted nearly 700,000 database searches last year across the range of popular databases we continue to have access to such as Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycInfo, ASSIA and Public health database.
We will continue to provide access to the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) on a new platform.
As well as special collections such as Barbour for British and international standards and legislation and MindTools for leadership and management learning and development.
Please note, we will no longer have access to: HMIC (Health Management Information Consortium), MIDIRS (Midwives Information & Resource Service) and Social Policy and Practice. If you would like more information about this, please contact us via the details at the end of this article.
Browse all our collections via The Knowledge Network Library Search.
In the last 12 months NHS Scotland OpenAthens account holders conducted 1,333,559 journal article downloads - that's 3,653 articles every day!
We continue to provide access to over 4,000 journals, including key publications such as the BMJ collections, The Lancet, JAMA, Harvard Business Review, British Journal of Social Work and many more.
From April 2025 we will also be providing access to:
- NEJM Evidence - a digital journal for innovative original research and fresh, bold ideas in clinical trial design and clinical decision-making
- British Journal of Hospital Medicine - covers all specialties in hospital medicine, publishing clinical articles, reviews, systematic reviews, etc. as well as quality improvement projects and a Doctors in Training section with clinical information in an easily accessible format
To browse or search for titles of interest to you, use the Journal Search on The Knowledge Network Library Search.
A wide range of essential medicines info resources continue to be provided, including BNF, Martindale, Palliative Care Formulary and many more.
In the last 12 months users downloaded an incredible 1,128,465 sections - that's over 3,000 downloads a day!
Access the full range of curated resources via The Knowledge Network Medicines Information page.
We have created a handy infographic to showcase the resources available via The Knowledge Network and how NHS Scotland OpenAthens users have used them in the last 12 months. (Select the image to enlarge)
Transcript - The Knowledge Network Digital Library Resources 2024-25 Infographic
Easy access
The key to all of this is your NHS Scotland OpenAthens username, which is linked to all NHS Scotland staff email addresses and free to self-register for social care, local authority, health and social care students and partners in Scotland.
We also provide easy access to journal articles via LibKey - a special browser extension that links you to subscriptions from Google, Wikipedia and all over the web, so you can spend less time searching for the research you need. Find out more about LibKey and how to get it via our getting started pages
NHS Scotland staff can request materials not in the Knowledge Network collection - details on how to do that can be found at Finding and ordering external materials.
We now have an amazing 37,186 OpenAthens users - but we need more! Share this news with your colleagues so they can discover the huge range of resources made available to them via The Knowledge Network.
We'll be sharing more information and training opportunities for these resources in the coming months.
- For news and updates subscribe to our monthly Knowledge Nuggets
- Help to use the Library Search via Information skills
- Register for our popular Finding information lunch and learn series via Training opportunities
- For resources to promote The Knowledge Network see our About pages
For further assistance, please contact: Knowledge Services Help Desk
Recent news and annoucements
Finding information lunch and learn – new dates now available!
Monday, 14 April, 2025
Current awareness bulletins - new editions and new bulletins coming soon
Tuesday, 01 April, 2025