Medical Librarianship in Nigeria--a review of the literature and comments on some problems and prospects.

The literature of medical librarianship of Nigeria is reviewed. The staff structure of Nigerian univeristy libraries and, in particular, of the medical libraries attached to them is restrictive, unprogressive, and unconducive to the development of medical librarianship in Nigeria. These medical libraries should cease to be administered and regarded as just unavoidable appendages of the main university libraries. They should be independent, full-fledged libraries of their own, recognixed as full academic departments of their respective colleges or faculties, with their heads being in no way inferior in status to other heads of academic departments.The granting of faculty status to Nigerian unviersity librarians should go the whole way and let the principle of multiple professorships be applied to the staff structure of unviersity libraries. Efforts are being made to effect bibliographic organization of Nigerian medical literature. A national library of medicine for Nigeria, however, humble its beginning, should be established.     

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.     

Financial support at the time of paper acceptance: a survey of three medical journals

The author‐pays model (open access publishing funded through author charges) is dependent on authors having access to financial support at the time their research papers are accepted. We conducted an author survey to determine the availability of external funding for publication charges at different points in the research process. Of the 377/524 (72%) who responded, 62% (233/377) received external funding to support their study, but with notable differences between journals. Only 25% (95/377) could withdraw funds from a grant at the time of paper acceptance. The grant was closed at this time for almost half (105/233, 45%) of those who were externally funded. Non‐externally funded research was largely supported through departmental resources (56%, 80/144) or carrying out research in own time (63%, 91/144). To conclude, a large proportion of published research is not externally funded, and many funded researchers do not have access to financial support at the time their paper is accepted for publication.