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There are many types of libraries and all of them struggle to a greater or lesser extent with the issue of staff recruitment and development. With the involvement of colleagues from four hospital libraries, this article examines the question of how new staff is recruited. What requirements have medical librarians to meet? What skills and qualifications do applicants need to have and which can be acquired on the job? How are suitable applicants made aware of the announced positions and how can the employee be retained in the long term once the position has been successfully filled? The article takes a closer look at these and other questions, presents best practices and shows possible strategies for recruiting and developing staff.

The Helios Central Library has been operating largely in the digital space for more than 20 years. The employees of the Helios Kliniken Group, currently about 76,000, can use the library from all locations in Germany as well as from home. In this article, the challenges that library staff face in organizing analogue and digital public relations work over such a large distance, the measures that have been taken so far and new ones that are being thought of will be presented.

With the start of the Corona pandemic, the Helios nursing schools faced many challenges. Face-to-face teaching had to be switched to digital, communication no longer took place on site but on channels such as Zoom, Skype or Teams. At the same time, the Helios central library licensed an interactive learning tool and made it available to the nursing schools. This paper describes the process of implementation, communication, support and collaboration around the platform in the midst of a time when contact restrictions became commonplace. It has become clear that the library can and must support the development of media and information literacy in nursing schools. Despite the high communication effort that continues, the Helios central library is much more present in the minds of all teachers and students. Thanks to the project, the library has established itself as a point of contact for the nursing schools.