Medical "publishing societies" in eighteenth-century Britain.

This article reviews the relationship between medical journals and publishing societies in eighteenth-century Great Britain. The importance of the perception that these journals were being issued under the auspices of societies is revealed by the number of times this kind of sponsorship was invoked by new medical journals. This kind of endorsement was projected even when a society so designated exercised only a nominal responsibility for the journal and, even when, in some instances, no organization can be said to have existed.

Peer review in 18th-century scientific journalism.

Although the beginnings of "peer review" are frequently associated with the Royal Society of London when it took over official responsibility for the Philosophical Transactions in 1752, antecedents of peer review practices go back to the 17th century. Despite the differences in the academic, social, intellectual, and economic environments of the 18th century and today, we can find interesting and instructive similarities in the way early editors defined and exercised their prerogatives and responsibilities. These concerns extend to ideas and practices that are closely related to what we call peer review or refereeing today.

The new library building at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The new University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Library opened in June 1983, replacing the 1968 library building. Planning a new library building provides an opportunity for the staff to rethink their philosophy of service. Of paramount concern and importance is the need to convey this philosophy to the architects. This paper describes the planning process and the building's external features, interior layouts, and accommodations for technology. Details of the move to the building are considered and various aspects of the building are reviewed.

A clinical information consultation service at a teaching hospital.

The library and the department of medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio cooperated in a three-month pilot project to test a clinical information consultation service that provides patient care information to house staff members in the clinical setting. Evaluation indicated that users were highly satisfied with the service. Results of our pilot project seem to show that a clinical information consultation service can be an efficient and cost-effective means to provide information in a patient-care setting.

The librarian's life, scholarship and librarianship.

Librarians must be more than custodians of the record or merely managers of information services if they are to understand their role and to participate in the life of scholarship. There are many approaches to this understanding including the historical, the social, the psychological and the epistemological. It can also be sought through a study of the sociology of knowledge and a study of the ways in which changes in communication technology in writing and printing have impacted on scholarship in the past. This may also provide us with the means of preparing for the impact of new computer technology on the scholarship of the future.

A regional cooperative acquisition program for monographs.

A cooperative acquisition program for monographs for the twelve resource libraries in Region IX of the Regional Medical Library Network is described. Each of the participating libraries has agreed to purchase all books of an assigned publisher which fall within a prescribed subject-format profile. It is hoped that this will help to reduce unnecessary duplication and contribute toward the development of resources in the region.

Comparison of holdings of NLM (CATLINE) with those of resource libraries.

The collection development practices of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), with the goal of comprehensive acquisition of biomedical monographs, are compared with those of the resource libraries of the TALON (Region IX) Regional Medical Library. Holdings of two resource libraries in the TALON region, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and of the TALON Union Catalog of Monographs were compared with the NLM CATLINE data base for four subject classes and selected imprint years. Foreign-language coverage is lacking in Region IX, with English-language coverage is lacking in Region IX, with English-language coverage ranging between 70 and 88% of titles listed in CATLINE. Absent English-language material tends to be ephemeral or otherwise out of scope for the resource libraries. Between 7.1 and 18.8% of monographs acquired in each subject class by the two recource libraries are lacking in CATLINE; this represents between 2 and 8% of the CATLINE titles for each class.

Management data for collection analysis and development.

Sound management data are needed to evaluate the collections of health sciences libraries. This study reports the utilization of computer data bases to compare the libary collections of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. The University of Texas Medical Branch, and the National Library of Medicine's CATLINE data base. The imprint dates of the records of two libraries are compared to measure acquisitions rates. Subject profiles for the Q and W classes demonstrate the similarity of the collections. Reasons for the variances are considered.

A union catalog of monographs: another approach.

The rationale for and the production of the 1977 TALON Union Catalog of Monographs are described. The 158,859 records include the existing machine-readable records for six health sciences libraries plus the cataloging of six others, converted by matching other data bases and by keypunching. The method and costs of production are discussed. Use of Computer-Output-Microfiche (COM) significantly decreased the cost and time required for publication. The $.076 unit cost per entry, with both author and title access for the COM method, is almost one-half the unit cost for the previous method which offered only main-entry access. The TALON Catalog compares favorably with the Midwest Medical Union Catalog. The addition of the title index significantly increases its usefulness. However, the unique feature of the TALON Catalog may be its machine-readable form which offers the potential for quantitative analyses of health sciences library collections. Such data may be essential for rational management of limited library funds.

Nonprint media as information resources: software and hardware.

Nonprint materials are rapidly becoming important information and learning resource materials for the health science library. Because of their long experience in organizing and utilizing informational materials, libraries represent highly appropriate repositories and sites for utilization of these new materials. Nonprint materials differ from printed materials in several ways, and this may account for the resistance of some librarians to dealing with them. One of the most important differences is that a machine must serve as mediator between the information and the user of nonprint materials. Also, the great variety of formats and machines can confuse the novice. The librarian must learn to deal with these differences in a creative way through a process of cooperation and collaboration with media and educational technology specialists.

An Investigation of the Educational Needs of Health Sciences Library Manpower: Part VII: Summary and Conclusions.

The major findings and conclusions of a survey of manpower in health sciences libraries of the United States in 1969 are summarized. Although there does not appear to be a serious manpower shortage in terms of budgeted positions which are unfilled (demand), the manpower situation can still be considered serious when we introduce into our evaluation of the situation the question of existing levels of training and the urgent requirement (need) to bring manpower levels to a point at which adequate information services can be provided to the whole health sciences community. This is the final paper in a series of papers on a manpower study which also summarizes and analyzes the manpower data obtained by the American Hospital Association survey of 1968 and presents a number of general conclusions and recommendations for manpower planning for health sciences libraries.

An investigation of the education needs of health sciences library manpower. V. Manpower for hospital libraries.

The extent of library service and the character of the library staff of hospitals in the United States are reported from the results of a survey conducted by the American Hospital Association in 1968. These data supplement the data reported on the nonhospital institutional population to make up a composite picture of health sciences library manpower today. Only 2,918 hospitals (48.5 percent) out of a total of 6,018 surveyed reported the existence of a library of any kind, though some of the hospitals reported multiple libraries. For all of these libraries only 2,872 individuals were reported under the rubric for "librarians," and of these only 726 were reported as having the master's degree or better. Of the total staff almost half are non-salaried (volunteer or contributory) and almost half of the salaried staff are half time. It is obvious, therefore, that hospital libraries must be substantially strengthened if they are to fulfill their important function in the biomedical information network.