Horizontal wires replace the vertical files

Traditionally, clippings of newspaper articles, pictures from magazines, pamphlets, charts, graphs, posters, proceedings, or copies thereof, and other miscellaneous information sources have been stored in vertical files in libraries. The practice of creating and maintaining vertical files is extremely time consuming. In a medical library, in particular, old information about diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis can quickly become incorrect, misleading, and possibly harmful. Adequately tending to the vertical files can require a librarian to create a balancing act between properly maintaining vertical files and meeting the needs of the users in other areas of the library. The maintenance of vertical files is, by nature, highly consumptive of paper and space consuming. A reasonable alternative to the traditional vertical files is the World-Wide Web. Search engines exist for locating specific information, and bookmarks and/or links which point users to particularly useful sites can be set in search software. Some methods for searching are discussed, and a variety of World-Wide Web information sources are offered.     

Sources of information on postgraduate medical training programs--update

This is an update of an earlier article listing directories, journal articles, and general books that aid the librarian, resident, or medical student in finding information on residency and fellowship programs. The article also gives suggestions for building a file of program catalogs related to residencies, fellowships, and clerkships and related materials.     

A description of the catalog division project at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Library.

This paper describes the procedures used at the Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia to divide its ninety-year-old dictionary card catalog. The division was necessitated by overcrowding, obsolete subject headings, and lack of a complete authority list which resulted in like materials being scattered throughout the catalog under several headings. Two catalogs were created: the historical-biographical catalog, representing all works published before 1950 and all works of historical or biographical nature; and the current catalog, containing all works published from 1950 on, excepting historical or biographical materials. The 1950- catalog was further divided into name and subject catalogs, and the subject section was revised according to MeSH. The project was completed in about two years. As a result, searching time has been much reduced, and the library is able to take advantage of the annual revisions of MeSH to update the subject catalog.