Our Services
The library subscribes to 180 current healthcare journals and stocks over 8000 books and reports covering medicine, dentistry, nursing, midwifery, allied health, management and research.
Click here to open the Ipswich Hospital library catalogue in a new window. 
Please contact us if you need help locating a title.
ELMS is the new Eastern Library catalogue which provides information about resources available at Ipswich Hospital library and at most of the NHS healthcare libraries in the East of England region. It can be browsed by anyone, but members will need a library ID and pin number to manage their accounts online. If users of Ipswich NHS libraries would like to request items from other services shown by ELMS they should email us at hospital.library@ipswichhospital.nhs.uk
Click here to open the NHS Eastern regional library catalogue in a new window.
Loans
Up to five items may be borrowed at a time. The loan period is one month for books (or two weeks for short loans) and seven days for journals. An item can be renewed once unless another borrower has requested it. Renewals can be made by email or telephone.
Books being returned should either be given to library staff or left in the book return box outside the library. Overdue standard loan books are charged at a rate of 6p per day, and short loans at 10p per day.
Requests for items not in stock
We can obtain articles or books not held in stock from regional or national collections. Our current charges are:
- Copy article obtained from another local/ NHS library: £2.00
- Book loan from another NHS library: £5.00
- Copy article from the British Library: £5.25
- Book loan from the British Library: £15.00
Click here to submit an inter-library loan request online.
Literature search service
We offer a free literature search service to any member of staff requiring information to support patient care, research or service development. Use the link below to request a literature search or contact the library if you want to be present while the search is carried out.
Click here to submit a literature search request online.
Photocopying
Photocopy cards can be purchased for either 30 units (£2.00) or 90 units (£5.00).
One-off copies are charged at 10p per sheet. Please contact the library for information about departmental photocopy cards.
Study and IT facilities
The library offers a quiet place to study with eight PCs providing internet access and MS Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc). Printing costs 5p per page. We can also bind dissertations. Please ask for our current charges.
Access to online healthcare information
As well as many freely-available online resources, all NHS staff have access to additional databases and full-text journal collections via an Athens password (register at www.athens.nhs.uk ). For more information please refer to our online resources page and to links for a listing of key web sites.
The library also offers training on searching the literature, inductions and presentations to groups and departments. For further details please see our training page.
Information for selected staff groups
We have devised a range of fact sheets to explain library services and resources for specific staff groups, which are available on our online resources page.
