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Not strictly relevant to the thread but maybe of interest, the BMA library now finds itself doing quite a bit of work with refugee doctors. The BMA now gives free membership to doctors who are refugees and not yet on the UK medical register. In practice this means a weekly copy of the BMJ, advice from the local BMA office on registration and other matters - and use of library services. For most refugee doctors the priority is to study for their PLAB exams (language and clinical knowledge, run by the GMC) and a significant number of those with easy access to central London have use our reading room as a study and meeting place. We have not had the resources to make special stock provision for them, but readers' service staff have put a significant amount of time into making sure our refugees get the best out of the facilities we have to offer. Our collection anyway includes a lot of exam-support material, and we can supply decent bandwidth on the internet terminals. Although we've made no special efforts to do this, it's clear that for many of our refugees the library has played a significant role in helping them adapt to life in the UK - if only because it is one of very few institutions where they meet a wholehearted welcome and where they get treated as something other than a problem in search of a solution. I was actually quite worried when the new category of membership was proposed without, as I saw it, the library getting the extra resources we would need to deal with a new population of members. PLAB students do not have the best of reputations in many medical libraries and I had particular worries about loan items not being returned - not out of badness or carelessness on the regugees' paret but simply as an inescapable consequence of the unsettled lives many lead. These worries have proved completely unfounded and a more concerned, less delinquent group of users would be hard to imagine. They have made a certain amount of extra work for the reading room staff, but on the other hand we have had the compensation of a group of users happy as hell just to be in our library and pleased (and in one or two cases amazed) by what is on offer. Tony McSean BMA Librarian ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager ([log in to unmask]) www.bma.org.uk **********************************************************************