The development of education for medical librarians

Formal education for medical library specialization was initiated only thirty-two years ago despite the fact that medical libraries received special treatment for many years before that time. The philosophy of specialized education was developed as early as 1925, and this theory was finally put into practice beginning with the medical reference and bibliography course given at Columbia in 1939. In the late 1940s the requisites for medical librarians were formalized into a certification code by the Medical Library Association, and since that time specialized education for medical librarians has grown stronger using this code as a guideline. This education consists basically of two types-formal library school courses and internship programs which offer a working-while-learning situation. Now that the established programs have a few years of history, there is a need for evaluation and restatement of goals and methods.     

Basic psychiatric literature. I. Books

Widely varying recommended reading lists for psychiatry residents were obtained from 140 AMA-approved training programs. Approximately 4,000 articles, 2,800 books, and 200 serials were listed. The number of recommendations for each book was counted, and a rank-order determined. A second rank-order was determined from the lists of those eighty-seven programs which indicated that their material covered the "basic" literature; a third rank-order was determined from the number of residents using the lists. All rank-orders agreed on the "most recommended" book and the first eighteen books; there was a 92 percent correlation through the first 453 books. One-third of the "basic" recommendations were for the first 104 books; one-third for the next 349 books, and one-third for the remaining 1,994 books. The subject matter of the first 104 books indicated that the currently most popular subjects in psychiatry are psychoanalytic theories of personality, schizophrenia, psychotherapy, and child psychiatry. A list of the 104 most recommended books is appended.     

A DEFENSE OF "RATIONAL" PERSONNEL SELECTION, AND TWO NEW METHODS

This paper presents two new techniques for use in personnel selection. One is a simple graphical technique which non-technical personnel can use to help in deciding how many minority applicants to admit to an institution. The other is a large-scale computer technique which an institution can use to increase personnel diversity on many variables (including culture) simultaneously. Both techniques appear to have major advantages over the particular technique this author advocated previously (1971). However, the new techniques are based on the same general view the author has expressed earlier (1971, 1973): that personnel selection questions concerning culture must be handled rationally—that is, by human judgment—rather than by mechanical formulas. Early sections of the paper summarize and defend that view.