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Most libraries cannot meet patron demands for biomedical information using only their in-house collections. Consequently, many types of libraries request biomedical information through interlibrary loan, and these include not only academic health sciences libraries, hospital and special libraries, but also general libraries. In Nevada, with its small population spread over a large geographic area, it has become critical to develop a statewide network for sharing biomedical information. As the state resource library, the Savitt Medical Library launched an effort to establish a network, via DOCLINE, of all Nevada libraries that have health-related collections. The process of convincing academic and community college libraries to join DOCLINE and the resulting benefits of improved resource sharing and cooperative collection development are discussed.

Purpose: Identify journal collection access and use factors.

Setting and Subjects: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Health Sciences Library patrons.

Methodology: Survey forms and user interactions were monitored once a week for twelve weeks during the fall 1997 semester. The project was based on a 1989 New Mexico State University study and used Kantor's Branching Analysis to measure responses.

Result: 80% of reported sought journal articles were found successfully. Along with journal usage data, the library obtained demographic and behavioral information.

Discussion and Conclusions: Journals are the library's most used resource and, even as more electronic journals are offered, print journals continue to make up the majority of the collection. Several factors highlighted the need to study journal availability. User groups indicated that finding journals was problematic, and internal statistics showed people requesting interlibrary loans for owned items. The study looked at success rates, time, and ease of finding journals. A variety of reasons contributed to not finding journals. While overall user reports indicated relatively high success rate and satisfaction, there were problems to be addressed. As the library proceeds in redesigning both the physical space and electronic presence, the collected data have provided valuable direction.

Physicians in rural areas often feel professionally isolated due to lack of access to medical center services, particularly library services. To test the need for and use of medical library services, an experimental program was established for physicians in southeastern Kentucky. Physicians were given a toll-free number to call for assistance or to make requests, and persons in two rural locations were trained in the use of basic library reference sources. A communication procedure to a university medical center was established to help patrons obtain information. Evaluation of the service showed that users were much more satisfied with the availability of medical library resources.

Purpose: To begin investigating the impact of electronic journals on research processes such as information seeking, the authors conducted a pilot journal-use study to test the hypothesis that patrons use print and electronic journals differently.

Methodology: We placed fifteen high-use print titles also available in electronic format behind the circulation desk; patrons were asked to complete a survey upon requesting a journal. We also conducted a parallel survey of patrons using library computers. Both surveys asked patrons to identify themselves by user category and queried them about their journal use.

Results: During the month-long study, patrons completed sixty-nine surveys of electronic and ninety surveys of print journal use. Results analysis indicated that fellows, students, and residents preferred electronic journals, and faculty preferred print journals. Patrons used print journals for reading articles and scanning contents; they employed electronic journals for printing articles and checking references. Users considered electronic journals easier to access and search than print journals; however, they reported that print journals had higher quality text and figures.

Discussion/Conclusion: This study is an introductory step in examining how electronic journals affect research processes. Our data revealed that there were distinct preferences in format among categories. In addition to collection management implications for libraries, these data also have implications for publishers and educators; current electronic formats do not facilitate all types of uses and thus may be changing learning patterns as well.

The Health Education Center in Pittsburgh, a community-based health promotion agency which provides library services to health professionals, students, and the lay public, received a resource grant in 1981 from the National Library of Medicine to study professionals' awareness of consumer health information (CHI) materials for their patients and clients. A survey of telephone patrons and on-site library patrons provided details on health professionals' use of the CHI resource center: their areas of interest, the material formats they preferred, and the intended use of the materials. Health professionals' demand for information about consumer-oriented materials and their satisfaction with the HEC library suggest that such a resource can be a valuable asset to a community.

Purpose: The research sought to provide evidence to support the development of a long-term strategy for the Via Christi Regional Medical Center Libraries.

Methods: An information needs assessment was conducted in a large medical center serving approximately 5,900 physicians, clinicians, and nonclinical staff in 4 sites in 1 Midwestern city. Quantitative and qualitative data from 1,295 self-reporting surveys, 75 telephone interviews, and 2 focus groups were collected and analyzed to address 2 questions: how could the libraries best serve their patrons, given realistic limitations on time, resources, and personnel, and how could the libraries best help their institution improve patient care and outcomes?

Results: Clinicians emphasized the need for “just in time” information accessible at the point of care. Library nonusers emphasized the need to market library services and resources. Both clinical and nonclinical respondents emphasized the need for information services customized to their professional information needs, preferences, and patterns of use. Specific information needs in the organization were identified.

Discussion/Conclusions: The results of this three-part, user-centered information needs assessment were used to develop an evidence-based strategic plan. The findings confirmed the importance of promoting library services in the organization and suggested expanded, collaborative roles for hospital librarians.

The records of health care institutions can be of great value to library patrons. Yet, librarians rarely provide these unique resources because records must be collected, arranged, and described before they can be useful to patrons. The University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of the History of Nursing conducted a survey of health care agencies in the mid-Atlantic region to locate records created by area health care institutions. The goals of this project were to develop a database of primary source materials, to place organizational records with enduring value at suitable repositories, and to assist in the development of in-house archival programs at agencies keeping records. In-house programs provide health care institutions with a systematic way to preserve their records for administrative, legal, fiscal, and research use. Such programs also facilitate access to information, reduce cost through records management, and promote an institution through preservation and use of its historical records. The survey demonstrated that record keeping is not coordinated in most institutions, and that institutional awareness of the organization or content of records is minimal.

The Central Medical Library (CMK) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, started to build a library Website that included a guide to library services and resources in 1997. The evaluation of Website usage plays an important role in its maintenance and development. Analyzing and exploring regularities in the visitors' behavior can be used to enhance the quality and facilitate delivery of information services, identify visitors' interests, and improve the server's performance. The analysis of the CMK Website users' navigational behavior was carried out by analyzing the Web server log files. These files contained information on all user accesses to the Website and provided a great opportunity to learn more about the behavior of visitors to the Website. The majority of the available tools for Web log file analysis provide a predefined set of reports showing the access count and the transferred bytes grouped along several dimensions. In addition to the reports mentioned above, the authors wanted to be able to perform interactive exploration and ad hoc analysis and discover trends in a user-friendly way. Because of that, we developed our own solution for exploring and analyzing the Web logs based on data warehousing and online analytical processing technologies. The analytical solution we developed proved successful, so it may find further application in the field of Web log file analysis. We will apply the findings of the analysis to restructuring the CMK Website.

The subpoena process represents a legal obligation and duty of citizenry and is becoming a fact of life in the operations of many libraries. Regardless of whether a library is directly involved in litigation, the library director may be faced with adjusting operations to compensate for the loss of personnel, collection materials, or other resources in order to accommodate the demands of a subpoena. This paper outlines the formal subpoena process and highlights a number of scenarios by which the library may become a part of the process. The area of computer law, in particular, may present a "growth phase" in library litigation. In addition, recommendations to minimize the service interruptions caused by the subpoena are offered. The director must assist library counsel in formulating a response to challenge, modify, or quash (throw out) the subpoena. Efforts to quash the subpoena require proof that the materials requested are irrelevant to the case, not subpoenaed for "good cause," or that compliance would be unduly oppressive and burdensome. In any case, the library director must be fully prepared to educate counsel on the potential impact of the subpoena.

The use of focus groups to determine patron satisfaction with library resources and services is extensive and well established. This article demonstrates how focus groups can also be used to help shape the future direction of a library as part of the strategic planning process. By responding to questions about their long-term library and information needs, focus group participants at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas Library contributed an abundance of qualitative patron data that was previously lacking from this process. The selection and recruitment of these patrons is discussed along with the line of questioning used in the various focus group sessions. Of special interest is the way the authors utilized these sessions to mobilize and involve the staff in creating the library's strategic plan. This was accomplished not only by having staff members participate in one of the sessions but also by sharing the project's major findings with them and instructing them in how these findings related to the library's future. The authors' experience demonstrates that focus groups are an effective strategic planning tool for libraries and emphasizes the need to share information broadly, if active involvement of the staff is desired in both the development and implementation of the library's strategic plan.

To meet the informational needs of health care practitioners and trainees in a four-county rural area of northwestern North Carolina, the eleven-member UNIFOUR Consortium was founded as a two-year experimental project from 1978 to 1980. The consortium has several unique features: (1) it is an organization of institutions, not libraries; (2) it employs its own professional librarian who manages a central library, coordinates consortium programs, and makes regular circuit visits to all affiliated institutions; (3) the central library, where the circuit is based, is a developing community hospital library, not an established academic medical center library; and (4) it is ultimately tied to the Northwest Area Health Education Center and that organization's emerging learning resources network, which includes the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Library, two other subregional libraries, and the libraries of all member institutions. At the end of the experimental period in 1980, member institutions voted unanimously to continue the program and assume their share of the costs.

The Health Sciences Resource Centre forms part of the National Science Library of Canada, whose collections and services are described. The new Centre coordinates activities of the various provincial medical libraries. Its creation began with increased collections of medical journals, and plans are underway to print out a union list of medical journals from the Union List of Scientific Serials tapes.

The first product of the Centre is a medical “proceedings index” to proceedings held by the National Science Library; this is computer-produced, and will appear annually.

An analysis was made of the medical items requested for borrowing from the National Science Library according to type of material, service provided, type of user, and geographical location. The results are given.

A description is given of the SDI service currently provided by the National Science Library, based on Chemical Titles, Chemical Abstracts Condensates, INSPEC, and the ISI tapes. It is hoped to expand this data base with MEDLARS tapes.

The North Carolina Area Health Education Centers Library and Information Services (NC AHEC LIS) Network provides library outreach services to rural health care providers in all nine AHEC regions of North Carolina. Over the last twenty-five years, the AHEC and university-based librarians have collaborated to create a model program for support of community-based clinical education and information access for rural health care providers. Through several collaborative projects, they have supported Internet access for rural health clinics. The NC AHEC Digital Library—under development by NC AHEC, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, East Carolina University, and Wake Forest University—will further extend access to electronic biomedical information and resources to health professionals in a statewide digital library.

A group of librarians from institutions with formal problem-based learning (PBL) curricula tracks began meeting informally in 1989 to explore the common elements among libraries serving PBL curricula. In 1991, a self-study was undertaken to delineate library services in these schools and also to identify the mechanisms that enable libraries to respond directly to the PBL curriculum. This paper reports results of this self-study, including findings regarding services, collection access, library access, and, particularly, areas that facilitate the PBL process, such as availability of on-demand and tailored user education, end-user literature searching, and electronic mail. Formal and informal library instruction, both optional and required, is described. The self-study also identified structured and unstructured methods of student access to PBL curriculum resources, including bibliographies, formally defined reserve collections, and student and faculty resources. The many roles of the professional librarian within the PBL curriculum are described; librarians may serve as traditional service providers, as resource persons, as faculty, or as tutors or facilitators in PBL curriculum sessions.

In October 1998, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched a pilot project to learn about the role of public libraries in providing health information to the public and to generate information that would assist NLM and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) in learning how best to work with public libraries in the future. Three regional medical libraries (RMLs), eight resource libraries, and forty-one public libraries or library systems from nine states and the District of Columbia were selected for participation. The pilot project included an evaluation component that was carried out in parallel with project implementation. The evaluation ran through September 1999. The results of the evaluation indicated that participating public librarians were enthusiastic about the training and information materials provided as part of the project and that many public libraries used the materials and conducted their own outreach to local communities and groups. Most libraries applied the modest funds to purchase additional Internet-accessible computers and/or upgrade their health-reference materials. However, few of the participating public libraries had health information centers (although health information was perceived as a top-ten or top-five topic of interest to patrons). Also, the project generated only minimal usage of NLM's consumer health database, known as MEDLINEplus, from the premises of the monitored libraries (patron usage from home or office locations was not tracked). The evaluation results suggested a balanced follow-up by NLM and the NN/LM, with a few carefully selected national activities, complemented by a package of targeted activities that, as of January 2000, are being planned, developed, or implemented. The results also highlighted the importance of building an evaluation component into projects like this one from the outset, to assure that objectives were met and that evaluative information was available on a timely basis, as was the case here.

A national sample of health sciences and other types of libraries having significant holdings of biomedical literature was studied to determine the status of library preservation programs. Findings pertaining to 134 basic health sciences libraries and to ninety-seven resource libraries in the Regional Medical Library Program network are reported and discussed. Basic health sciences libraries participating in the study were primarily hospital libraries; resource libraries were primarily academic health sciences center libraries. Findings include information on topics perceived to be of greatest need for staff training and for informational or educational materials; on levels of preservation activity, staffing, and funding; and on capabilities for participating in a national cooperative preservation program. Efforts to identify general and special biomedical collections of potential importance to a national preservation program met with limited success.

Background

The North Carolina (NC) Area Health Education Center's (AHEC) Digital Library (ADL) is a web portal designed to meet the information needs of health professionals across the state by pulling together a set of resources from numerous different sources and linking a pool of users to only the resources for which they have eligibility. Although the ADL was designed with the primary purpose of linking health care professionals to a set of licensed resources, the ADL also contains a significant number of links to free resources. These resources are available to any ADL member logging into their ADL account and to guest visitors to the ADL. While there are regular assessments of the subscription resources in the ADL as to utility and frequency of use, up until this point there has been no systematic analysis of the use of the overall set of free resources. It was decided to undertake an examination of the usage of ADL free resources over a 6-month period to analyze the utility of these resources to both ADL members and guests.

Methods

Each time a resource is accessed through the ADL, it is logged in a table. This study used a SQL query to pull every free resource accessed between November 1, 2005 and April 30, 2006. An additional query also pulled the user information for each free resource accessed. Once the queries of the database were complete, the results were imported into an Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using basic descriptive statistics.

Results

The vast majority of resource use through the ADL is to licensed resources. There are 2056 free resource URLs in the ADL, to which 1351 were linked out, meaning there was at least one link out to 65% of the free resources. The single most popular free resource was PubMed with 4803 link outs or nearly 20% of the total link outs to free resources. The breakdown of free resource use by different use groups indicates that the highest percentage of use of free resources was by guests followed by institutional affiliates and AHEC Faculty/Staff. The next 3 highest user groups accessing free resources are: paid members, preceptors, and residents.

Conclusion

The only free resource capturing a significant number of link outs is the free link to PubMed. This reflects the importance placed on traditional medical literature searching by the ADL clinical user base. Institutional affiliates access free resources through the ADL with the second highest frequency of all the user groups. Finally, in analyzing use of free resources, it is important to note the overall limitations of this survey. While link outs are excellent indicators of frequency of use they do not provide any information about the ultimate usefulness of the resource being accessed. Further studies would need to examine not only the quantitative use of resources, but also their qualitative importance to the user.

Objectives: The paper gives examples of the bioinformatics services provided in a variety of different libraries by librarians with a broad range of educational background and training.

Methods: Two investigators sent an email inquiry to attendees of the “National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI) Introduction to Molecular Biology Information Resources” or “NCBI Advanced Workshop for Bioinformatics Information Specialists (NAWBIS)” courses. The thirty-five-item questionnaire addressed areas such as educational background, library setting, types and numbers of users served, and bioinformatics training and support services provided. Answers were compiled into program vignettes.

Discussion: The bioinformatics support services addressed in the paper are based in libraries with academic and clinical settings. Services have been established through different means: in collaboration with biology faculty as part of formal courses, through teaching workshops in the library, through one-on-one consultations, and by other methods. Librarians with backgrounds from art history to doctoral degrees in genetics have worked to establish these programs.

Conclusion: Successful bioinformatics support programs can be established in libraries in a variety of different settings and by staff with a variety of different backgrounds and approaches.

Objective: The research analyzes usage of a major biomedical library's pre-1993 print journal collection.

Methodology: In July 2003, in preparation for a renovation and expansion project, the Biomedical Library at the University of California, San Diego, moved all of its pre-1993 journal volumes off-site, with the exception of twenty-two heavily used titles. Patrons wishing to consult one of these stored volumes could request that it be delivered to the library for their use. In the spring of 2006, an analysis was made of these requests.

Results: By July of 2006, 79,827 journal volumes published in 1992 or earlier had been requested from storage. The number of requests received declined with age of publication. The usage distribution exhibited a “long tail”: 50% of the 79,827 requests were for journal volumes published before 1986. The availability of electronic access dramatically reduced the chance that corresponding print journal volumes would be requested.

Conclusions: The older biomedical print journal literature appears to be of continued value to the biomedical research community. When electronic access was provided to the older literature, demand for older print volumes declined dramatically.

Dental school libraries offer resources of value to dental practitioners, but do not always consider practitioners to be primary clientele. A survey was conducted among the sixty U.S. dental school libraries to examine policies and attitudes toward service to practitioners. Although library use by dentists is estimated to be low, most libraries are willing to serve them as long as it does not reduce the libraries' ability to assist students and faculty. Of the respondents, 57% replied that they do not use promotional methods to inform dentists of available services. Greater involvement in marketing activities may benefit both libraries and dentists.

To provide its users with quick and easy access to the library resources, the Muriel and Philip Berman National Medical Library, Jerusalem, between 1978 and 1982 developed an integrated library system (MAIMON) on a minicomputer. Because humans are the most important element of the library system, MAIMON's performance was evaluated in terms of benefits provided to patrons, library management, and library staff. After successfully adopting the system, users' needs and expectations have grown. How the existing system will be used and expanded to meet the new information demands at the library is discussed.

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SignIn-Stat, a PC-based, menu-driven program, collects information from users of the library's public access computer systems. It was used to collect patron use data for the library's four CD-ROM workstations for the period September 1987 to April 1988 and to survey users for the period December 1987 to March 1988. During the sample period, 5,909 CD-ROM uses were recorded. MEDLINE was the most heavily used database, followed by PsycLIT and Micromedex CCIS. Students accounted for 61% of the use, while faculty, residents, and staff were responsible for 31%. Graduate students had the highest rate of use per student. Nineteen percent of use was by patrons who had never used CD-ROMs before, while 37% was by patrons who had used CD-ROMs ten or more times. Residents were the least experienced user group, while graduate students and faculty were the most experienced.

Objective: The paper demonstrates the value of the Health Sciences Library/Fuld Campus to the organization and shows how responses from patrons aligned themselves with the categories of the taxonomy of contributions of library and information services (LIS) to hospital and academic health centers devised by Abels et al.

Methods: Over a period of thirty-two months during 2001 to 2003, patrons' literature searches and interlibrary loans were followed up on by sending patrons letters, which included a question asking for feedback as to how the information was used. The comments from users were analyzed according to Abels et al.'s taxonomy of LIS contributions in hospital and academic health centers.

Results: Results of this study substantiated previous research showing that health sciences LIS contributes to patient health care. Feedback also demonstrated other areas where LIS contributes to the mission and goals of the organization and how these align themselves with Abels et al.'s taxonomy.

A survey was disseminated to learn physicians' perceptions of library/information resources and services available in South Dakota. It sought their reactions to various information sources, their assessment of available library services, and their opinions as to which services should be promoted. Descriptive data provided by the respondents (geographic location, affiliation, specialty, years of service, and local institutional availability of library services) were correlated against responses. Only the last variable (which indicated whether the physician was unserved, underserved, or served by library information services) provided significant differences in group responses. The survey, results, and implications for library services in other rural states are discussed.

Question:

How can an existing library instruction program be reconfigured to reach basic sciences graduate students and other patrons missed by curriculum-based instruction?

Setting:

The setting is an academic health sciences library that serves both the university and its affiliated teaching hospital.

Methods:

The existing program was redesigned to incorporate a series of seven workshops that encompassed the range of information literacy skills that graduate students in the basic sciences need. In developing the new model, the teaching librarians made changes in pedagogy, technology, marketing, and assessment strategies.

Results:

Total attendance at the sessions increased substantially in the first 2 years of the new model, increasing from an average of 20 per semester to an average of 124. Survey results provided insight about what patrons wanted to learn and how best to teach it.

Conclusion:

Modifying the program's content and structure resulted in a program that appealed to the target audience.