The road to virtual: the Sauls Memorial Virtual Library journey.

The Sauls Memorial Virtual Library closed its physical space in 2012. This article outlines the reasons for this change and how the library staff and hospital leadership planned and executed the enormous undertaking. Outcomes of the change and lessons learned from the process are discussed.

Journal usage in NHS hospitals: a comparison report of total usage at an acute NHS Trust and a specialist NHS Trust in the North West of England.

BACKGROUND: Health care libraries spend a large amount of their non-pay budgets on the purchase of scientific, technical and medical journals. In a typical hospital library in the National Health Service (NHS) North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA), this can represent between 80 and 90% of the collection development budget. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data were collected from 1 December 2005 to 30 November 2006 using COUNTER-generated usage statistics obtained from publishers' administration tools. Between the two trusts included in the study, 93 376 full-text article downloads were recorded; of these, 15 952 or 17.1% articles were downloaded from national core content journals via Proquest. Photocopies made by users for their own use were recorded whenever this data were available. CONCLUSIONS: NHS staff at the sites included in this study recorded a high volume of journal usage. There was a marked difference in usage patterns between the acute and specialist trusts in the study. The journals provided by national core content represented a much higher proportion of total usage at the acute trust (29.9%) compared with the specialist cancer trust (4.5%). This study supports the view that the local purchasing of journal titles is an important component of the overall journal-based information provision to NHS staff.

A hospital archives ... what's it all about?

Establishing a hospital archives can be a daunting, though exciting project, with many positive outcomes. The description of archives, in general, and the distinctions of a hospital archives, specifically, are presented. The initial steps which need to be considered when developing a hospital archives are detailed using the Maine Medical Center Archives as an example.

Study to assess the compensation and skills of medical library professionals relative to information technology professionals.

PURPOSE: The study seeks to determine how medical library professionals performing information-technology (IT) roles are compensated and how their positions are designed compared to information technology staff in their institutions. METHODS: 550 medical library directors in hospital and academic medical libraries were surveyed. The data was then compared to survey data from other compensation studies of the IT industry. RESULTS: There is a gap in compensation between medical library professionals and IT professionals performing similar functions using information technology. Technology-intense library jobs are compensated at higher levels than more traditional jobs. CONCLUSIONS: To compete with IT salaries, managers of medical library professionals will need to be ever more cognizant of the employment practices of IT professionals in nonmedical library disciplines. It is typically in the medical library's best interest to ensure that IT-related jobs, accountabilities, and capabilities of the medical library are known and understood by others, especially in the human resources and information technology staff departments.

Postgraduate training in public health medicine: St George's Hospital Medical School Library public health information service.

This article examines the development of the St George's Hospital Medical School Library public health information service. Begun in 1997 as a pilot project to support Public Health Specialist Registrars in South Thames West, it is now an established part of postgraduate training in the region. An outline of the service is described, including the evolution of the post of Public Health Librarian. Issues influencing the development of the service, and the establishment of the Librarian as part of the public health network are discussed. This is a transferable model of public health information provision, which as a centralized resource makes best use of available funding. As a LIS model it is an effective and efficient way of maximizing resources, and delivering a service to a specialist user group that is spread across a wide geographical area.

Cost effectiveness of a medical digital library.

The rapid increase in the price of electronic journals has made the optimization of collection management an urgent task. As there is currently no standard procedure for the evaluation of this problem, we applied the Reading Factor (RF), an electronically computed indicator used for consultation of individual articles. The aim of our study was to assess the cost effective impact of modifications in our digital library (i.e. change of access from the Intranet to the Internet or change in editorial policy). The digital OVID library at Rouen University Hospital continues to be cost-effective in comparison with the interlibrary loan costs. Moreover, when electronic versions are offered alongside a limited amount of interlibrary loans, a reduction in library costs was observed.

[The libraries of the public hospitals in Spain. An economic analysis. The Research Group on Libraries]. / Las bibliotecas de los hospitales públicos en España. Un análisis económico. Grupo de Investigación en Bibliotecas.

BACKGROUND: The continuous increase in scientific knowledge in the health field, the development of new technologies and the rising cost of publications means that libraries are essential for patient care, medical education and research. In Spain some deficiencies have been seen in hospital libraries, and their cost is unknown. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the cost of public hospital libraries in Spain and to estimate the cost of adapting them to international standards. METHODS: Cross-sectional survey of public hospitals larger than 100 beds, or smaller public hospitals with teaching accreditation. Information on the variables of interest was collected by questionnaire mailed to the libraries and followed up by telephone. Data collection was completed in 1996. The information on costs is for 1994. A sensitivity analysis was done to examine the effects of imprecise estimates and assumptions. RESULTS: Of the 314 hospitals identified, 211 (67.2%) had libraries. The 1994 cost of the of the 211 libraries was 3,060 million pesetas (mean cost: 14.5 million pesetas). Personnel costs were the most important item (38% of the total), followed by the cost of subscriptions (29%). The cost of hospital libraries represented 0.08% of national public expenditures on health. The cost of correcting inadequacies in accordance with international standards would increase spending by about 400 million pesetas the first year (0.01% of public spending on health). CONCLUSIONS: The cost of hospital libraries represents only a small fraction of public spending on health. Correction of the observed deficiencies and the importance of libraries in the health system would require increasing spending to about 0.1% of public spending on health.

Brandon/Hill selected list of books and journals for the small medical library.

The interrelationship of print and electronic media in the hospital library and its relevance to the "Brandon/Hill Selected List" in 1999 are addressed in the updated list (eighteenth version) of 627 books and 145 journals. This list is intended as a selection guide for the small or medium-size library in a hospital or similar facility. More realistically, it can function as a core collection for a library consortium. Books and journals are categorized by subject; the book list is followed by an author/editor index, and the subject list of journals by an alphabetical title listing. Due to continuing requests from librarians, a "minimal core" book collection consisting of 82 titles has been pulled out from the 214 asterisked (*) initial-purchase books and marked with daggers ([symbol: see text]). To purchase the entire collection of books and to pay for 1999 journal subscriptions would require $114,900. The cost of only the asterisked items, books and journals, totals $49,100. The "minimal core" book collection costs $13,200.

Innovation and survival: a case study in planning medical library services.

In the information age, information utilities like libraries are as sensitive to the stresses of change as any other organization. This article is a case study of a small, specialized medical library as it attempted to understand, and cope with, the complex simultaneous challenges of serious budgetary constraints, technological change, and shifting user demands in the mid 1990s. To support planning decisions in a period of declining use statistics, the Medical Library at Women's College Hospital, Toronto, carried out a user survey that posed choices about priorities among services. Conclusions drawn from the survey and its related planning process may help similar organizations design an appropriate service blend for future users.

Using scientific evidence to improve hospital library services: Southern Chapter/Medical Library Association journal usage study.

BACKGROUND: Journal usage studies, which are useful for budget management and for evaluating collection performance relative to library use, have generally described a single library or subject discipline. The Southern Chapter/Medical Library Association (SC/MLA) study has examined journal usage at the aggregate data level with the long-term goal of developing hospital library benchmarks for journal use. METHODS: Thirty-six SC/MLA hospital libraries, categorized for the study by size as small, medium, or large, reported current journal title use centrally for a one-year period following standardized data collection procedures. Institutional and aggregate data were analyzed for the average annual frequency of use, average costs per use and non-use, and average percent of non-used titles. Permutation F-type tests were used to measure difference among the three hospital groups. RESULTS: Averages were reported for each data set analysis. Statistical tests indicated no significant differences between the hospital groups, suggesting that benchmarks can be derived applying to all types of hospital libraries. The unanticipated lack of commonality among heavily used titles pointed to a need for uniquely tailored collections. CONCLUSION: Although the small sample size precluded definitive results, the study's findings constituted a baseline of data that can be compared against future studies.