Analysis of recorded biomedical book and journal use in the Yale Medical Library. II. Subject and user relations.

Cancelled charge slips collected over a one-year period supply the data for this analysis of circulation in the Yale Medical Library. Full-time teaching faculty are the heaviest users of journal literature, and students, of monograph literature. Faculties of Medical School departments are compared in terms of their use of material in individual subjects. Subject literatures are analyzed in terms of groups of users borrowing from them. The extent to which journal titles used by medical students are also used by Medical School faculty is examined. One of the products of the study is a rank list of journal titles used in the Library. Results are presented in several tables.

Analysis of recorded biomedical book and journal use in the Yale Medical Library. I. Date and subject relations.

Analysis of book and journal circulation is based on cancelled charge slips collected over a one-year period in the Yale Medical Library. About two-fifths of material circulated were monographs. Books and journals in seven subject fields provided over half of the circulation. Approximately two-thirds of both books and journals used had been published during the most recent nine years. A subject-by-subject examination of the ratio of books to journals circulating revealed that, in subjects where proportionally more journals than books were taken out of the Library, books were of more recent imprint dates than were journals, contrary to the overall pattern. Date distribution of books and journals by subject was also studied. Results are illustrated with graphs and tables.

How biomedical investigators use library books.

Relatively few studies have been concerned with the use of biomedical books. This paper reports an investigation into use made of library books by biomedical investigators. Based on cancelled charge slips collected at the Yale Medical Library circulation desk, telephone appointments were made to interview those research investigators whose books had been returned the previous day. The interviewer obtained answers from the investigator to a questionnaire to discover how the investigator had learned of a book, if the book had been useful, and, if useful, how it had been used. During the six-month study period, 30.4 percent of researchers' volumes returned were monographs. Almost four-fifths of books borrowed supplied information wanted, and about four-fifths of books used had been printed in the previous decade. Nine-tenths of the use of books was research-related, the other tenth being for lecture preparation.