The hospital library committee: its composition and tasks

Since a sizeable hospital must have a library, it must have a library committee. Like all hospital committees, this one is to help maintain standards of medical care and to mediate between staff and administration. Unlike others, it clusters around one elected member (the chairman) and one employee (the librarian). A dynamic librarian can, and should, influence and inspire the committee's deliberations; and must be able to depend upon the support of the physician members of the committee.     

Library systems in the electronic era

The ‘traditional’ academic library system model – i.e. a central system constructed around a common catalogue record that also dictated the end‐users' view – is breaking down. Systems that were constructed to handle the processing and lending of printed items are no longer capable, on their own, of dealing with the variety of different information resources handled by modern academic libraries. A great deal has been written about how end‐users expect more ‘Web 2.0’ features than library catalogues currently provide. New front‐end services have been designed by libraries and library system providers to cater for this need. However, not much has been written about the needs of internal library staff who struggle with processing, handling, and supporting the huge volume of electronic resources subscribed to by libraries. Electronic resource management systems have been developed to cater for these needs, and new standards for data interchange with such systems have been developed. Just as standards were important in encouraging electronic data interchange (orders, invoices, claims, etc.) between libraries, publishers, and agents in the last century, so new standards are evolving for such transactions in the electronic era.     

Book Review

Peer Review: The Challenges for the Humanities and Social Sciences A British Academy Report British Academy, 2007, 61 pp. Freely available online at http://www.britac.ac.uk/reports/peer‐review/index.html ; print copies available on request from Ms Vivienne Hurley, The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1P 5AH, UK; tel. +44 (0)20 7969 5268; email v.hurley@britac.ac.uk     

图书馆学实验方法研究

<正> 一、基本概念"实验"可以定义为研究者对起重要作用的条件加以精确地说明和控制的一种研究方式.改变一个或多个自变量的值,观察这种变化对于一个或多个实验组的各个因变量值的影响.而其它可能与研究课题有关的(即影响因变量的值)因素,则通过精密的实验将其限制在最小程度.这样,通过控制实验的条件,研究假设的基本要求就得到满足.在图书馆学方面,实验方法可以用于鉴定那些有关图书馆藏书建设,藏书保管和藏书利用等方面的新技术,说明那些定义不准