Choosing 6.00 pm as the time at which the evening starts is arbitrary and probably inaccurate. Increasingly services are running later or healthcare professionals are working later than 6.00 pm. However, we have chosen 6.00 pm as a breakpoint. Furthermore, the evening, particularly late evening after children have gone to bed, is the time when people get involved in continuing professional development or rows or make more reflective use of the library or prepare their research projects. For this reason there is a need for a librarian service in the evening, namely the ability to discuss one s searching needs with a skilled information professional who could either help with the search or conduct the search which need not be done immediately.
Most people stop using knowledge services after midnight, although by no means all.
From midnight on the main need for knowledge is for those people who are running emergency services GPs on call, young doctors, nurses and ambulance staff. It is at this time when conventional knowledge services are at their least accessible with libraries locked and often across menacing dark areas. For this reason there is a need for an emergency knowledge service during these hours. One of the central planks of the strategy Information for Health is to improve access to the NHSnet and the Web for clinicians. So far as the public is concerned, we are assuming that there will be continued increase in access to the Web and are planning for the NeLH to be made available on digital television as it develops.