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.     

Medical information, health sciences librarians, and professional liability

As a gatekeeper to medical literature and a critical link in the delivery of information to physicians, the librarian's role raises the issue of the librarian's professional liability. The paper suggests several ways in which liability may attach to the librarian or the librarian's employers. Although the librarian's personal risk is negligible, the physician's exposure due to ineffective library work is substantial since the courts have held that a physician must keep abreast of progress in his field. Librarians can also become associated with professional liability actions as part of a case against a physician or hospital through the legal doctrine of vicarious liability. The paper concludes by suggesting several proactive steps for health sciences librarians to pursue to insulate themselves from professional liability and to insulate physicians and institutions from vicarious liability.     

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.     

On the problem of determining a citation index of publications by Kazakh scientists

This paper discusses the evaluation of scientific activity with the help of some scientometric indices, in particular, a citation index. The information massif of the bibliographic database of citations to domestic publications of Kazakh authors is statistically described.     

Key issues of the development of the information infrastructure and information support of innovation activities

We consider some issues of the development of the national information infrastructure in the field of innovation, including a national system of accounting for the results of scientific and technical activities (RSTA) and a national new-generation research computer network (NNGRCN). The current state of the national system of scientific and technical information and its resources for information support of innovation processes are analyzed. In the context of further development of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), we propose a Conception of scientific and technical support for programs and projects of NIS member-states in the field of innovation, making it possible to incorporate the existing innovation-oriented information resources into a joint distributed integrated information system as well as to create new information resources and technologies.     

Science at Harvard University, 1846-47: a case study of the character and functions of written documents

This paper explores surviving documentation and what it reveals about the underlying social structure and relations in a historic time and place. The mid-nineteenth century is chosen as a period prior to modern bureaucracies so that documents are not found in defining filing systems. Some six hundred documents are studied individually and characterized collectively. They are examined not to tell a story, however, but for evidence of their creation and maintenance and of their physical types, functional characteristics, and relations between authors and recipients. The study reveals the fruitfulness of such an orientation to documents, which complements traditional historical uses that emphasize document content.     

Analysis of the use of reference services in an academic health sciences library

In 1991, the Reference and Information Services staff of the Alfred Taubman Medical Library at the University of Michigan gathered data on the use of the reference desk, including the frequency and types of assistance requested by different user groups throughout the year. Recommendations based on the results of this study led to improved service as well as more efficient use of staff resources.     

Outreach to health professionals in a rural area

An outreach project which juxtaposed technology (Grateful Med) and a human intermediary (a circuit librarian) to serve health professionals in a rural area of Illinois is described. The five goals of the project were: promote Grateful Med as a clinical tool; introduce circuit librarianship to Illinois; heighten the awareness of health professionals to the value of timely information services; increase the visibility of the resource library; and evaluate the impact of the two components, Grateful Med and circuit librarianship. While the project was well-received and enjoyed short-term success, sustaining the same level of information activity post-project has not been achieved. Insuring utilization of health information by remote health professionals may be characterized as a Sisyphean task.     

Controlling the field of academic economics in Hungary, 1953–1976

Conclusions On the basis of these findings, I suggest that the structure and organisation of the field of Hungarian economics under state socialism should be described as a case of partitioned bureaucracy.⁹ The compromise between research economists and the political elite in the New Course era between 1953 and 1955¹⁰ survived the post-1956 reaction in so far as political economy, with its predominantly legitimatory and ideological functions, remained partitioned from the other sectors in the field through the remainder of the state-socialist period. This secured considerable protection both for Marxist-Leninist political economy—which faced the destabilising effects of exposure to the findings of serious empirical research—and for the other sectors, which were professionally oriented and earnestly interested in the pursuit of unbiased empirical research, free from stifling agitprop interference. Our data concerning the reputational control of the field reflects only one, although very important, aspect of this partitioning. Another and much plainer aspect is that, from the early 1960s, the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee no longer exercised control over the field, except in the political economy sector.The proposition about the mechanism paradigm should not be taken seriously as a statement of a Kuhnian type of intellectual organisation of Hungarian economics, with reform economics at its hard theoretical core. But it should certainly be taken seriously as a reflection of the sociopolitical structure which emerged and developed from the mid-1950s onwards. Neither the politicians nor the economists saw as necessary or even contemplated the integration of Hungarian economic research with Western mainstream economic thought. In exchange for the professional expertise and socio-economic intelligence necessary for the exercise of power, Hungary's state-socialist political class offered their economists relative autonomy and freedom from interference. The price the economists had to pay was partly to refrain from openly and systematically challenging the beliefs perpetuated by the political economy of socialism, and partly to accept in their research the paramountcy of policy orientation. But this burden they assumed willingly since it made them the only group within Hungary's academic intelligentsia—indeed, the only group in Hungarian society outside the political class—with the privilege of being coopted to the institutions with power over some restricted domains of policymaking. After 1989, especially under the conservative Antall government, this proved less than advantageous.¹¹ Although the benevolence of many critics is open to question, it could greatly benefit the field if the economists' expulsion from contemporary politics went hand in hand with provision of the material, intellectual and institutional conditions for a new approach where a fundamentally scientific orientation is paramount.     

Benchmarking in health care: using the Internet to identify resources

Benchmarking is a quality improvement tool that is increasingly being applied to the health care field and to the libraries within that field. Using mostly resources assessible at no charge through the Internet, a collection of information was compiled on benchmarking and its applications. Sources could be identified in several formats including books, journals and articles, multi-media materials, and organizations.