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.     

Physician information seeking: improving relevance through research

Health sciences libraries have considerable potential as resources for both formal continuing professional education, as well as the informal continuing education that results from the professional's efforts to solve problems in daily practice. While there is a growing interest in making the resources of health sciences libraries more accessible to practitioners on a routine, day-to-day basis, there also needs to be more awareness of how, when, where, and why professionals look for information in the context of practical problems. This paper reviews recent research that identifies the context in which physicians seek information and advice from external sources, the information sources that physicians access, and the factors that influence which particular sources are sought. The results indicate that physicians vary in their information needs, preferences, motivations, and strategies for seeking information. This diversity suggests that health sciences libraries, in their efforts to be more accessible, should consider "market research" to determine the needs, preferences, and use patterns of the library's targeted users. Libraries may also benefit from exploring alternative methods of improving access to their resources.     

Expanding rural primary care training by employing information technologies: the need for participation by medical reference librarians

The use of rural sites to train badly needed primary care providers requires access to sophisticated medical information not traditionally available outside of academic health centers. Medical reference librarians can play a key role in the development of primary care training sites in rural settings. Electronic information technologies, with proactive support from medical reference librarians, can provide current and detailed information without concern for distance from the health science center library. This paper discusses recent developments in technology, describes current challenges to the application of this technology in rural settings, and provides policy recommendations for medical reference librarians to enhance rural primary care training.     

Reconciling rising serials costs, the serials budget, and reference needs in a medical library serials retrenchment program: a methodology

Devising a coherent serials retrenchment plan while maintaining quality reference service is a dilemma faced by increasing numbers of medical librarians. In 1991, the staff of the Shiffman Medical Library, Wayne State University, began to address increasing serials budget reductions that by 1994 amounted to a projected 20% maximum cut. The resulting retrenchment plan combined an ongoing serials use study, faculty and librarian reviews of cancellation lists, and systematic refinements in interlibrary cooperation and document delivery service. The Shiffman plan provides a constructive framework that can be adapted to other medical libraries facing immediate, major serials retrenchment.     

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.     

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.     

The literature of women and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS): implications for collection development and information retrieval

The purpose of the study was to identify the pattern of publication about women and AIDS in scientific journals. Bradford zones were identified in each of six databases. The study determined that journal scatter for this subset of AIDS literature differed from the scatter in the general literature; further, the information indexed in the six electronic sources demonstrated little overlap. Consequently, key journal and newsletter titles identified by this study should form the core of any collection focusing on women and AIDS. The assurance of quality patient care management demands that librarians consult multiple resources for information retrieval that can assist health care providers, patients, and caregivers to enhance quality of life as well as to provide optimum care.