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Current Subscribers: 350
Responses to Inquiries
1. RESPONSE: IDENTIFYING "CORE" COLLECTIONS
[The following are responses to Jett McCann's inquiry about strategies for
identifying a core collection for academic health science libraries.]
From: Anne Batt, Univ. Western Australia <abatt@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
At the University of Western Australia Medical Library we are working on identifying a core collection for our Faculty of Medicine. I am not sure that you can have a "universal" core collection as each institution will have its own priorities.
The plan we are following is as follows:
1. Using the Conspectus recommendation that to teach a subject, an institution needs at least 25% of English language Index Medicus titles in that subject, we identified the relevant subjects in "List of journals indexed...", counted the number of English titles and the number representing 25% for that subject.2. Faculty are anxious that we should focus on the "most important" titles as indicated by the SCI Impact Factors. So we matched "List of journals indexed..." subject headings with SCI subject headings (some combined and some split!) and entered titles and impact factors into a database, starting with the highest rating titles and continuing until we reached the NUMBER representing 25% of IM titles.
3. From SCI we did an online search to get: - a ranked list of titles in which our authors are publishing - a ranked list of titles which our authors have cited. We ensured that these titles were included in our database, and the number of articles and cites recorded.
4. We added in Australian titles.
5. We are now adding to the database other important information such as cost of subscription, whether we currently have the title, whether we have ever subscribed etc
Having put all this information in a database we can produce all kinds of sorted and ranked lists as we need them
The next step, and the big test, is to present the information to a meeting of faculty reps. so that they can make an informed decision about what they want to include in the CORE COLLECTION for the faculty as a whole. It is envisaged that some additional titles will be available for each academic department outside of the CORE.
I hope you can find some useful ideas in all of this. I'll be happy to report on success/failure of the project in the future!
From: Myleen Oosthuizen, Univ. of Pretoria <MOOSTHUI@medic.up.ac.za>
I'm just commenting on the journal cancelling dilemma which almost every library has to face. The best option, I think, is to try and get the optimal service from a low budget and that means looking at a different spectrum of options, including computer databases - that is if you are in the privileged position of affording the technology. We, at the University of Pretoria's Medical Library tried to solve the problem by first cancelling our duplicates and languages other than English and Afrikaans (which is a few anyway). Because we are in the position in which we still can afford a biomedical fulltext database, we cancelled the titles which occur in our library as well as on the database - and here I must put emphasis on the fact that these titles exclude core journals which the users must be able to browse or consult physically in the library.
Another option is to cancel journals other than core journals, that occur on the Current Content Database as well and provide the user with the content pages of these journals, and the article, if needed, via interlibrary loan or other computerized databases available. This mean that although we cannot provide the physical journal in our library, we still can supply the user with the information therein. It may be that if the user could have seen the article, he could have found it of no use in the first place, but that is where you have to play the options off against each other and make the decisions which will work for your library.
I am looking forward to better ideas and opinions and love to hear what worked for other type of libraries.
Wishing everyone good luck with future cancelling! (or sharp and clever expansions!)
From: The Editor dmorse@hsc.usc.edu
I'm not aware of anything approaching a definitive listing of core titles for academic health science library collections, and collection development wouldn't be half as much fun if there were such a thing. The bottom line for me is how often a given title is being used or requested through ILL. The collection here lacks some fairly prestigious titles in the area of experimental pharmacology, but there just doesn't seem to be a constituency for them on this campus. On the other hand, our collection in the neurosciences goes well beyond the "core" level in order to meet the demands of a very active neuroscience research program here.
I would agree with Anne Batt on the usefulness of identifying journals in which faculty members are publishing (and by reviewing the cited references in those journals for further related titles).
Another strategy I have used to justify additional funding for new titles is to identify titles not owned by the library that are subscribed to by more than half of the other academic medical libraries in the region -- a fairly simple task using our regional SERHOLD-generated union list.
One interesting and useful attempt at identifying the key life science journals is Tony Stankus' _Making Sense of Journals in the Life Sciences_ (Haworth, 1992).
2. RESPONSE: GORDON & BREACH PRICING POLICIES
From: Hannah King, SUNY HSC Library at Syracuse
<KINGH@VAX.CS.HSCSYR.EDU>
I just decided to cancel our subscription to __Growth Factors__, a Gordon & Breach title. My Readmore account representative told me that Readmore would be sending out a letter of explanation regarding Gordon & Breach subscription pricing practices. However, my primary reason for cancelling the title was a reminder from my account rep that G&B are demanding pre-payment for an irregularly published title. I had canceled other titles that should be billed when published for which G&B had demanded payment in advance of any definite publishing schedule or number of volumes. This company appears to be determined to jettison all previous, accepted standards and etiquette of publishing practice.
Regarding the question in the last issue about increasing frequency of editions, I, too, have noticed that titles have been coming up with new editions sooner than I would have expected. I've been at Majors 3 1/2 years and have noted several titles coming through that seemed awfully familiar, and not just because they were big name titles. Since I write the bibliographic summaries Majors includes on its Weekly New Book List and in our database, when I check back, I discover that yes, I did write that bib, which means it has appeared again since August, 1991. Majors doesn't keep statistics on frequency of editions ( another project for our spare time!), so I discussed this with Van Vick, Regional Vice President, Operations, and he confirmed at the very least, the impression of increasing frequency. This may be due in part because of two things, the information explosion and profit motive. None of this is official or documented, so Majors would also be very interested in seeing hard data.
[Editor's Note: It seems natural to expect publishers to try to maximize their return on popular titles by increasing the frequency of new editions, whether or not they are justified by the progress of knowledge. This is more or less the same phenomenon as journal publishers doubling the size (and cost) of an existing journal rather than risking the launch of a new journal.]
4. NOTICE: DIGEST OF HEALTH-RELATED WWW SITES WITH HYPERTEXT LINKS
From: The Editor <dmorse@hsc.usc.edu>
[Reprinted]
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Research Design & Statistics Unit (RDSU) Announcement
***** NOTE *****
Use of the proposed materials assumes access and knowledge
Of a WWW-browser (e.g., NETSCAPE OR MOSAIC).
The RDSU will begin publishing an online digest providing hypertext links to interesting and exciting WWW locations for health and medical information. The digest is called: "HEALTH AND MEDICAL INFORMATICS DIGEST." It will be emailed to subscribers FREE of charge. Subscribers will save the email message to their local computer as an " .html" filetype document, and access the local html file from their WWW-browser.
To subscribe to HEALTH AND MEDICAL INFORMATICS DIGEST, simply send an email message to:
hmid-request@maddog.fammed.wisc.edu
In the body of the message type:
subscribe hmid
NOTE: Please remove your signature file from the message. Our listserver attempts to read signature files as commands and then sends you an error message.
The first issue of H&MID (Vol.1 No. 1) will be sent to subscribers next week (Friday, Feb., 17).
Table of Contents (with hypertext links *)
* What is Health and Medical Informatics Digest? Online Drug Info for Physicians * Research Design & Statistics Unit * NIH CRISP Database of ongoing NIH research * NIH calendar of events for next week MEDINFO'95 - 8th WORLD CONGRESS ON MEDICAL INFORMATICS * Current MMWR documents * Online Gross and Microscopic Pathology * Long term side-effects from the use of Tamoxifen * University of Texas Medical School Software * EPI INFO VERSION 6.0 * SCITECH: SOFTWARE FOR SCIENCE * What is new from the world of SEGA * A multimedia tour of the solar system
PLEASE FREELY DISTRIBUTE THIS MESSAGE
P.S. If you become aware of any links that may be interesting to the medical community, please drop us a line and let us know. Send to 'hmid-owner@maddog.fammed.wisc.edu'. Thanks.
=========================================================================== | __ , _ . , , , , .__ | Clay Helberg | | / / /_| | / / / / /__ | Research Design and Statistics Unit | | |__ /__ / | |/ / /__/ __./ | Schools of Nursing and Medicine | | | University of Wisconsin-Madison | =========================================================================== | Internet: helberg@maddog.fammed.wisc.edu | Bitnet: clavius@wiscmacc | ===========================================================================
5. NOTICE: WWW HOME PAGE FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
From: Richard Gedye, Oxford Univ. Press <GEDYER@oup.co.uk>
This is currently very much under construction, but worth adding to your list of personal bookmarks for when it is more fully developed in a few months' time. Then OUP will have, amongst other things, instructions for authors, recent and forthcoming contents, plus full subscription information, for the 150 or so journals which we publish.
The URL is:- http://www.oup.co.uk
At the moment, you will find some preliminary information at the site for two of our biomedical journals, NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH and HUMAN REPRODUCTION UPDATE. Your views on the information content as well as its structure and presentation would be very much appreciated.
HUMAN MOLECULAR GENETICS
You (or relevant library users) can now be automatically notified by e-mail of the contents of this OUP journal, approximately 3 weeks before receipt of your monthly issues, by joining the Human Molecular Genetics internet mailing list.
Simply send an e-mail to LISTSERV@NIC.SURFNET.NL with the following message:-
subscribe HUM-MOLGEN <first_name last_name> (BLAB)
For example, if your name is Paul Kennedy, then your e-mail message should read:-
subscribe HUM-MOLGEN Paul Kennedy (BLAB)
There is no need to put anything in the "Subject" field of your e-mail message.
Within a few hours you will receive a welcoming message, and then each month the advance list of contents for the following month's issue of Human Molecular Genetics. This internet mailing list is also used for other communications amongst human molecular geneticists, but you can restrict the information you receive to journal contents only, if you want. Instructions on how to do this will come either with your welcome message or a few days later.
6. NOTICE: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL WWW SERVER
From: LORRAINE LANNING, U. Colorado Health Science Center
<LANNING_L@Frango.HSC.Colorado.edu>
The Centers for Disease Control has a Web server, http://www.cdc.gov. They offer, under "Publications", all of their MMWR's for approximately the last year. They also provide the FREE software, Adobe Acrobat Reader, necessary for viewing and printing these documents. They are complete with charts, graphs, etc., just like the ones they ship. I replaced several missing issues and our bindery reduced them and had them bound. It's a great source for patrons who can't wait to read them. They now have them at their fingertips.
7. NOTICE: ELSEVIER SCIENCE AND OCLC TO MAKE JOURNALS AVAILABLE
ELECTRONICALLY
From: Maggie Wineburgh-Freed <mwfreed@hsc.usc.edu>
[reprinted]
DUBLIN, Ohio, Feb. 23, 1995--Elsevier Science and OCLC have signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the electronic distribution of Elsevier journals. Elsevier and OCLC plan to work together under a joint marketing arrangement to make all Elsevier Science titles available electronically.
"This new electronic subscription program follows after the TULIP and CAPCAS experiments Elsevier Science has conducted with a number of our customers," said Ronald Schlosser, President of Elsevier Science in New York. "We know from these experiments that implementation is both a major technical as well as organizational exercise. Facilitation of this process through cooperation with various technology partners is a benefit to the market."
"With this strategic alliance, electronic publishing truly comes of age," said K. Wayne Smith, OCLC President and CEO. "Elsevier Science brings a host of the world's most highly regarded journals; OCLC contributes a sophisticated technical infrastructure for use of these journals. It is a major advance for the electronic library and for the users of scientific, technical and medical information. It will start to transform the fundamental ways in which information is acquired, used and shared in the conduct of scholarly research."
In a pilot project during 1995, Elsevier's scientific, technical and medical journals will be made available on a subscription basis to selected test sites. This new service, called Elsevier Electronic Subscriptions (EES), will offer libraries complete electronic editions either in addition to or in lieu of paper journals. At the library's option, the journals can be provided using OCLC's SiteSearch system, which allows building, maintenance and searching databases locally, and OCLC's Guidon graphical user interface.
Both Elsevier and OCLC are preparing for wider participation of institutions and corporations after the first-year pilot has occurred.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL:
Elsevier Contact
Roland D.J. Dietz
OCLC, Nita Dean (614) 761-5002
nita_dean@oclc.org
8. NOTICE: JOURNAL REVIEWS PUBLISHED IN JAMA
From: Jon Eldredge, U. New Mexico <jeldredg@biblio.unm.edu>
[Editor's Note: Journal reviews published in JAMA represent a joint project between the Medical Library Association and the Association of Academic Health Science Library Directors. Each review is co-authored by a librarian and a physician, and the general editor for the reviews is Jon Eldredge (Univ. of New Mexico). Jon has provided the following list of recent and upcoming reviews (along with the JAMA issue date); it updates the list published in the August 1994 issue (no. 31) of BLAB.]
Academic Emergency Medicine: In Press American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry: In Press Anaesthetic Pharmacology Review: 8/17/94 Clinical Neuroscience: 10/5/94 Clinical Pulmonary Medicine: In Press Complementary Therapies in Medicine: 8/17/94 Emergency Radiology: In Press Gastroenterologist: In Press Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics & Gynecology: 11/2/94 International Hepatology Communications: 11/2/94 JAMIA: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Assoc.: 2/1/95 Journal of Craniofacial Surgery: 12/7/94 Journal of Medical Biography: 7/6/94 Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology: 9/14/94 Medical and Surgical Dermatology: In Press Primary Care Update for OB/Gyns: 1/4/95 Radiation Oncology Investigations: 9/14/94 Radiologist: In Press Scientific American: Science & Medicine: In Press Screening: 10/5/94 Seizure: 7/6/94 Technology and Health Care: 2/1/95 Wound Repair and Regeneration: 12/7/94
Sieber, Claude. Voyage: Visions in Color and Form. ISBN 0-86715-296-6.
Quintessence, 1994.
I hesitate to recommend anything that isn't directly relevant in a time of
tight budgets, but this book is so beautiful, I couldn't let it pass. If
anyone is doing an exhibit of art in the health sciences or needs a book
for a gift presentation at a retirement or another commemorative occasion,
consider this. This artistic atlas depicts teeth, mouths, and other dental-
related photographic images in an astonishingly beautiful way. The layouts
are striking, and the quality of the photographs and printing is exceptionally
high. The colors are deep and vivid. The author includes a few scenic
photographic impression, too, which struck me as odd, but the quality is
on a par with the more clinical impressions. As you might expect, a book
of this quality is expensive ($148.00), but worth it.
I am doing an internship with Frances Chen at the Arizona Health Sciences
Library. She suggested I contact you to post a question on BLAB for a
project we are doing on collection development policies for Internet data.
We are seeking input from those who are dealing with similar issues.
Specifically we are interested in information about criteria for
selection of Internet resources and in what format they will be
collected. Also of interest are issues of providing access, budget
allotment, copyright, and preservation and archiving of downloaded files.
Thank you for your assistance.
A consortium of the 52 libraries of the publicly funded institutions of
higher education in Texas [referred to as TEXSHARE] has negotiated a license
to provide network access to Periodicals Abstracts Research II Full Text
distributed by UMI. This will provide us with ASCII full-text articles to
approximately 600 general reference titles, many from 1994 forward. Most of
the titles are not in our collection, nor would we normally subscribe to
them. While all the details are not yet available, I beginning to wonder how
we can most effectively communicate that they are available. I'm inclined to
enter them in our online journal catalog with a holdings note referring users
to the FULL TEXT menu option [we don't have one yet, but we will] of the
library information system. I'm wondering if others have done anything like
this and what their experience has been.
Over the past six months I have started to notice that more and more
textbooks, particularly those in nursing, have included little pocket guides.
How are fellow BLABbers handling these items?
In case you're wondering about my own views, I consider these items to be
especially problematic: if I insert them in a pocket, they weaken the
binding and probably will get ripped off; they don't sit on the shelf; some
of the information seems so abbreviated that without the larger text, the
information might mislead a health professional. I do consider these items to
be helpful synopses in many cases of the textbooks they accompany, which a
health professional may want to carry around in a lab coat--but as a
library collection item?
I look forward to reading anyone's experiences and opinions.
Is there a good source, or sources, for finding out the availability and cost
of journals in alternate formats other than print, e.g. microfiche, CD-ROM,
etc.? This is in regards to converting already held print volumes into
another format, for space-saving or preservation reasons. Thanks.--Joann
The dean of a large medical school recently received a letter from a major
medical publisher offering him $250 per manuscript to be a referee for a
prominent journal.
[1] Have you heard of this practice? Are there specific publishers who do it?
[2] Because journal selection criteria in recent years have been modified to
take into account the referee status of journal content, should the fact that
a referee is paid or not be an additional criterion?
Editor: David H. Morse: dmorse@hsc.usc.edu. Paper mail:
USC Norris Medical
Library, 2003 Zonal Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033. Telephone: (213) 342-1134. The
BULLETIN is distributed free of charge, in electronic form only.
Requests for subscriptions and all editorial correspondence should be sent to
the editor <dmorse@hsc.usc.edu>.
9. REVIEW : VOYAGE: VISIONS IN COLOR AND FORM
From: Susan Gerding Bader, Major Scientific Books
10. INQUIRY: CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF INTERNET RESOURCES
From: Margaret A Jacobs, U. Arizona <mjacobs@aruba.ccit.arizona.edu>
11. INQUIRY: OPAC HOLDINGS NOTES FOR NETWORK-ACCESSIBLE JOURNALS
From: Daniel Jones, U.T. San Antonio <JONES@uthscsa.edu>
12. INQUIRY: HANDLING TEXTBOOKS ACCOMPANIED BY POCKET GUIDES
From: Jon Eldredge, U. New Mexico <jeldredg@biblio.unm.edu>
13. INQUIRY: IDENTIFYING ALTERNATIVE JOURNAL FORMAT AVAILABILITY
From: "Joann Crocker, Univ. Nebraska <JCROCKER@UNMCVM.UNMC.EDU>
14. INQUIRY: PAID MANUSCRIPT REFEREES
From: Daniel T. Richards, Dartmouth Univ.
The BIOMEDICAL LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS BULLETIN (ISSN: 1064-699X) is published
by
the Medical Library Association's Collection Development Section with the
cooperation of the University of Southern California Norris Medical Library.
BLAB is published more or less monthly, and includes items of news and opinion
contributed by its readers concerning biomedical library acquisitions.