The videorecord: new mode for learning

The successful delivery of health care involves a commitment to improved communication both with regard to health professionals and the public. The need for innovative educational patterns is implicit in the recommendations of the latest Carnegie Commission Report, Higher Education and the Nation's Health.The new technology of videorecording permits the learner to learn at a time and place of his own choosing. Information is transmitted through the cathode ray tube-a television set-the medium of our time. The videorecord is of significant value in the basic and clinical sciences, in training personnel for allied health professions, and in continuing education. It is thoroughly compatible with the new concept of the open university, an institution without walls.In addition to its unquestioned value in educational programs in the health sciences, the videorecord has major implications for the curriculum in librarianship and for increasing the professional competence of medical librarians and their ancillaries. The medical librarian has a major stake in its imaginative use for overcoming some of the barriers to individual and community health.     

Mechanization of libaray procedures in the medium-sized medical library. VII. Relevancy of cited articles in citation indexing

Science Citation Index is one of a number of indexes based on the assumption that the papers cited by one author refer to work which is relevant to the subject discussed by the author citing them. Cleverdon, however, has questioned that assumption, and it was to test the assumption that this research was undertaken. An attempt was made to determine what percent of articles cited were related to the citing article. The conclusion reached was that in the field of medicine approximately 72 percent of the cited papers were considered related to the original paper by the authors of the original, thus apparently bearing out the assumption for citation indexing.     

ITV Programmes for Schools: any future?

The immediate circumstances of the new Broadcasting Act are discussed. The impact of this legislation on schools broadcasting is then considered in relation to the history of earlier legislation in the UK, and the early responses to the Television Act of 1954. The importance of the personnel involved in television production and their commitment to the values of public service is stressed, and placed against the gloomier forebodings of the pessimists of the past‐‐and of today. The article concludes with the assertion that it is the people in the television industry itself, and the values they hold, that will ensure the continued survival of good schools television.     

Serials standards work: the next frontier

Serials, one of the more complicated areas of library technical endeavors, has lacked the benefit of standards for a long time. Even now, with standards beginning to be available, the majority of institutions are not working within standard serials formats. A survey to determine the use of serials standards in libraries was conducted in 1988 by the American Library Association, Resources and Technical Services Division, Serials Section, Committee to Study Serials Standards. In the spring of 1988 a survey was sent to a group encompassing the Association of Research Libraries members, CONSER participants, United States Newspaper Program participants, Microform Project libraries, and some vendors and librarians who attended the Committee meetings on a regular basis. The survey questionnaire assessed the current level of serials standards awareness of librarians and vendors. Topics included the type of serials systems used, standards relevant to serials control and union listing and whether or not they are implemented, types and levels of training staff received in the application of standards, benefits of the standards, and areas where standards are most needed.     

Risk management information for HIV infection

This article discusses HIV infection in terms of the risk manager's information needs in the health care environment. The malpractice problem, increasing workman's compensation suits, the greater role of the ombudsman, implementation of the National Practitioner Data Bank, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations' (JCAHO) emphasis on clinical excellence are conditions which have given greater importance to the risk manager's position. Included in this article are hedges to retrieve various components of risk management and a select bibliography from AIDSLINE.     

Book reviews

^cAbd al‐Malik b. Habib. Kitāb al‐Ta'rij (La historia). Edición y estudio por Jorge Aguadé. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1991 (Fuentes Arabico‐Hispanas, 1). 163 + 224 pp. [Arabic title: Kltāb al‐Ta'tikh]

Kedar, Benjamin Z., ed. The Horns of Hattin. Jerusalem and London: Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, Israel Exploration Society and Variorum 1992. 368 pp., 12 plates; $74.75 (cloth).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992. xi +101 pp., $22.00 (cloth).

Cameron, Averil and Conrad, Lawrence I., eds. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Papers in the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam). Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1992. xiv + 428pp., 12 plates; $29.25 (cloth).

Vereno, Ingolf. Studien zum ältesten alchemistischen Schrifttum. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992 (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 155). 414pp.

Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993. xv + 288pp., $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper).

Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. 281 pp., $19.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994. xv + 295pp., $34.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al‐Hallāj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated and edited by Herbert Mason. Abridged edition, Bollingen Series XCVIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xxxi + 293pp.

Viguera Molins, Maria Jesús. El Islam en Aragón. Saragossa: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1995 (Colección “Mariano de Pano y Ruata”, 9), 174 pp., 182 ills. in colour, maps, diagrams, charts etc No price stated.