BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS TABLE I RESULTS OF SURVEY % of users
P
affiliation Mount Sinai CUNY Affiliated hospital Other
78.5 14.4 2.5 4.6
Student House staff
Primary
% of users
Faculty/attending physician Other Mount Sinai employee Other
60.7 15.6 10.5 9.8 3.5
Materials in use Own
Library's Both Neither
% of users
30.8 46.6 21.5 1.1
Materials in use:
comparison with similar reports from other health Own sciences libraries and for planning staffing, Library's scheduling, and service patterns. A more detailed Both analysis of user activity according to group and time period would be desirable but was beyond the Neither Each interview lasted approximately one scope of this investigation. minute. Library users cooperated fully. Many REFERENCE were interviewed on a number of occasions, sometimes more than once on the same day. 1. DAVis, B. B. User needs: the key to changing library services and policies. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 63: 195-198, Apr. 1975. RESULTS The following results represent data collected during five survey weeks, the four in the original A Citation Analysis of the Bulletin of sample and the first week of our subsequent ongo- the Medical Library Association ing analysis. In comparing data on a week-byweek basis, a consistent pattern emerged. The BY CHING-CHIH CHEN, PH.D., results of 3,381 interviews appear in Table 1. Associate Professor Of the students in the sample, 30% were School of Librarv Science present in the evenings, 35% during the weekends. Simnmons College Of the house staff in the sample, 22% were present Boston, Massachusetts in the evenings, 21% during the weekends. Of the faculty/attending physicians, 17% were present in A SYSTEMATIC study of all the articles published in the 1966-1975 Bulletin of the Medical the evenings, 18% during the weekends. The results indicate that user distribution by Library Association, together with citations position is similar to that reported by Davis [1]. contained in their bibliographies, was conducted in This survey confirmed that the Levy Library's 1976. The preliminary results were presented at users are predominantly from the primary popula- the Poster Session at the Seventy-fifth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in tion to which we attempt to direct services. At the present time budgetary constraints have Minneapolis [1], and the detailed results and disnot forced us to reduce the hours of library opera- cussion of methodology have been presented as tion. Survey data were utilized in scheduling Part I of the author's recent Sourcebook on abridged summer hours. Because the results Health Sciences Librarianship, published by demonstrated substantial use during evening and Scarecrow Press [2]. Because BMLA is generally weekend hours, we were able to respond to user considered the definitive journal in the health demand for extended hours during those periods. sciences library field, a summary of the study is Revised scheduling for the academic year was also presented here for the readers' general interest. based on the data collected. We plan to repeat this SUBJECT COVERAGE survey every ten weeks throughout the year to detect changing patterns of use resulting from It was found that during the ten-year period, seasonal variation or changes in other local library BMLA published a total of 403 articles, the policies and schedules. number ranging from thirty-one in 1966 to fortyThe results presented here may be useful for nine in 1971. The broad subject areas covered in
290
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(2)April 1977
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS TABLE 1 SUBJECTS COVERED IN BMLA, 1966-1975
Subject areas 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
No. of articles
Library functions and services Application of technology in libraries Types of libraries National Library of Medicine programs and developments Medical librarianship Medical literature History of medicine, medical libraries, and medical literature Medical Library Association and related topics Biomedical communications networks Library buildings Library management Miscellaneous Total
these 403 articles, in descending order of total number of articles, are given in Table 1. A closer look at the detailed yearly breakdowns of each of the broad topics covered in BMLA seems to reveal that the subject matter of BMLA can be used to determine emerging trends in medical librarianship and new shifts in emphasis, topics of continual interest to health sciences librarians, and the development of ideas from their beginning to their more complex or fully developed states. For example, document delivery was frequently discussed from 1969 to 1972; regional medical libraries and regional medical programs were covered from 1968 to 1972. Bringing the activities of the national biomedical communication networks up-to-date, articles on consortia appeared in 1974 and 1975.
71 55 55
49 44 24 21 17 15 10 9 33 403
More than one-quarter (118) of the 403 articles lacked citations. For the other 285 articles, the number of citations per article varied greatly, ranging from one citation to 110. However, half of these 285 articles cited one to seven publications, and the overall mean was twelve citations. Only eleven articles cited forty or more (up to 110) sources, and most of these dealt with topics on the history of medical libraries and literature, and on library buildings.
CITATION SOURCES The 403 articles generated a total of 2,776 different citations from 2,310 individual sources. Thus, over 70% of the sources were cited only once in BMLA during the ten-year study period. The detailed breakdowns of these sources are given in Table 2. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF Although, as expected, journals were cited most BMLA ARTICLES frequently, nonjournal sources accounted for a The annual output of BMLA articles varies surprisingly large percentage of citations (43.2%). greatly from one year to another. During the pe- Of the journal citations, BMLA articles acriod 1966 to 1975, 1966 had the smallest number counted for only 31.3% of the total 1,577 citations, of articles (thirty-one), while 1971 had the largest or 25.3% of the total number of cited articles number (forty-nine). The mean was forty articles (1,285). The rest of the journal citations came from 275 non-BMLA journals. For these 275 per year. Of the total 403 articles, the mean length per journals, the distribution of subjects is given in article for each year ranged from 6.6 pages for Table 3. 1973 to 8.95 pages in 1970. However, the actual It is evident that BMLA authors used nonlilength of each individual article varied greatly brary-related sources widely. However, they from one page (1968) to 69 pages (one article in seemed to prefer library and information science 1972). Although the range of individual article sources. Of the top nine non-BMLA journals that length was wide, the mode was found to be five were cited more than fifteen times during the tenpages in a total of 70 articles (out of 403). year study period, only Science, JA MA, and Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(2)April 1977
291
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS TABLE 2
No.of citations
No.of items cited
Source Journal articles
1,285 (in 276 journals) 486
Books Government publications (NLM items in parentheses) Technical reports Conference proceedings Other publications Unpublished sources Total
179 (65) 135 74 103 48
2,310
1,577 571 227 (99) 161
82 108 50
2,776
Journal of Medical Education were included; see tempts to bring together a great variety of useful Table 4. source information for health sciences librarians, The six most frequently cited journals, together from about 900 nonjournal publications and 2,000 with BMLA, accounted for 43.3% of the total articles from 276 journal titles. 1,285 journal articles cited. It is also worth noting REFERENCES that a great majority of the articles cited in BMLA were less than fifteen years old (72.4% for 1. CHEN, CHING-CHIH. A systematic study of the literaBMLA articles cited and 75.1% for non-BMLA ture of health sciences librarianship. In: Grosch, Audrey N., ed. Frontiers in Health Sciences Liarticles cited). The mode time-lag for most of the brarianship, Extended Abstract Proceedings of the to two citations was one years. 75th Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Besides the results of this citation study that are Association, Minneapolis, June 12-17, 1976. p.49. given here, its most useful by-product is probably 2. __. Sourcebook on Health Sciences Librarianship. Metuchen, New Jersey, Scarecrow Press, the author's Sourcebook on Health Science Li1977. brarianship [2], in Part II of which about 3,000 pertinent citation sources are listed under selected broad subject categories. The Sourcebook at- Brief Survey of Public Information Services at TABLE 3
Broad subject
No. of journal titles
Library and information sciences Medicine Science Other
86 117 35 37
TABLE 4 Journal
Library Journal Special Libraries Library Resources and Technical Services Science JAMA College and Research Libraries American Documentation Journal of Medical Education Library Quarterly
292
No. of citations 54 47 35 35 34 32 21 21 16
Privately-Supported Medical School Libraries: Comparison with PubliclySupported Medical School Libraries BY CAROL ANN JEUELL, Reference Librarian George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences College of Medicine and Dentistry oJ'New Jersey Newark, New Jersey CECILIA B. FRANCISCO, Cataloger Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library Mt. Sinai School of'Medicine New York, New York JANE S. PORT, Associate Librarian for Public Services Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library Mt. Sinai School oJ'Medicine New York, New York
IN an attempt to define the extent to which the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc 65(2) April 1977
P
affiliation Mount Sinai CUNY Affiliated hospital Other
78.5 14.4 2.5 4.6
Student House staff
Primary
% of users
Faculty/attending physician Other Mount Sinai employee Other
60.7 15.6 10.5 9.8 3.5
Materials in use Own
Library's Both Neither
% of users
30.8 46.6 21.5 1.1
Materials in use:
comparison with similar reports from other health Own sciences libraries and for planning staffing, Library's scheduling, and service patterns. A more detailed Both analysis of user activity according to group and time period would be desirable but was beyond the Neither Each interview lasted approximately one scope of this investigation. minute. Library users cooperated fully. Many REFERENCE were interviewed on a number of occasions, sometimes more than once on the same day. 1. DAVis, B. B. User needs: the key to changing library services and policies. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 63: 195-198, Apr. 1975. RESULTS The following results represent data collected during five survey weeks, the four in the original A Citation Analysis of the Bulletin of sample and the first week of our subsequent ongo- the Medical Library Association ing analysis. In comparing data on a week-byweek basis, a consistent pattern emerged. The BY CHING-CHIH CHEN, PH.D., results of 3,381 interviews appear in Table 1. Associate Professor Of the students in the sample, 30% were School of Librarv Science present in the evenings, 35% during the weekends. Simnmons College Of the house staff in the sample, 22% were present Boston, Massachusetts in the evenings, 21% during the weekends. Of the faculty/attending physicians, 17% were present in A SYSTEMATIC study of all the articles published in the 1966-1975 Bulletin of the Medical the evenings, 18% during the weekends. The results indicate that user distribution by Library Association, together with citations position is similar to that reported by Davis [1]. contained in their bibliographies, was conducted in This survey confirmed that the Levy Library's 1976. The preliminary results were presented at users are predominantly from the primary popula- the Poster Session at the Seventy-fifth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in tion to which we attempt to direct services. At the present time budgetary constraints have Minneapolis [1], and the detailed results and disnot forced us to reduce the hours of library opera- cussion of methodology have been presented as tion. Survey data were utilized in scheduling Part I of the author's recent Sourcebook on abridged summer hours. Because the results Health Sciences Librarianship, published by demonstrated substantial use during evening and Scarecrow Press [2]. Because BMLA is generally weekend hours, we were able to respond to user considered the definitive journal in the health demand for extended hours during those periods. sciences library field, a summary of the study is Revised scheduling for the academic year was also presented here for the readers' general interest. based on the data collected. We plan to repeat this SUBJECT COVERAGE survey every ten weeks throughout the year to detect changing patterns of use resulting from It was found that during the ten-year period, seasonal variation or changes in other local library BMLA published a total of 403 articles, the policies and schedules. number ranging from thirty-one in 1966 to fortyThe results presented here may be useful for nine in 1971. The broad subject areas covered in
290
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(2)April 1977
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS TABLE 1 SUBJECTS COVERED IN BMLA, 1966-1975
Subject areas 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
No. of articles
Library functions and services Application of technology in libraries Types of libraries National Library of Medicine programs and developments Medical librarianship Medical literature History of medicine, medical libraries, and medical literature Medical Library Association and related topics Biomedical communications networks Library buildings Library management Miscellaneous Total
these 403 articles, in descending order of total number of articles, are given in Table 1. A closer look at the detailed yearly breakdowns of each of the broad topics covered in BMLA seems to reveal that the subject matter of BMLA can be used to determine emerging trends in medical librarianship and new shifts in emphasis, topics of continual interest to health sciences librarians, and the development of ideas from their beginning to their more complex or fully developed states. For example, document delivery was frequently discussed from 1969 to 1972; regional medical libraries and regional medical programs were covered from 1968 to 1972. Bringing the activities of the national biomedical communication networks up-to-date, articles on consortia appeared in 1974 and 1975.
71 55 55
49 44 24 21 17 15 10 9 33 403
More than one-quarter (118) of the 403 articles lacked citations. For the other 285 articles, the number of citations per article varied greatly, ranging from one citation to 110. However, half of these 285 articles cited one to seven publications, and the overall mean was twelve citations. Only eleven articles cited forty or more (up to 110) sources, and most of these dealt with topics on the history of medical libraries and literature, and on library buildings.
CITATION SOURCES The 403 articles generated a total of 2,776 different citations from 2,310 individual sources. Thus, over 70% of the sources were cited only once in BMLA during the ten-year study period. The detailed breakdowns of these sources are given in Table 2. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF Although, as expected, journals were cited most BMLA ARTICLES frequently, nonjournal sources accounted for a The annual output of BMLA articles varies surprisingly large percentage of citations (43.2%). greatly from one year to another. During the pe- Of the journal citations, BMLA articles acriod 1966 to 1975, 1966 had the smallest number counted for only 31.3% of the total 1,577 citations, of articles (thirty-one), while 1971 had the largest or 25.3% of the total number of cited articles number (forty-nine). The mean was forty articles (1,285). The rest of the journal citations came from 275 non-BMLA journals. For these 275 per year. Of the total 403 articles, the mean length per journals, the distribution of subjects is given in article for each year ranged from 6.6 pages for Table 3. 1973 to 8.95 pages in 1970. However, the actual It is evident that BMLA authors used nonlilength of each individual article varied greatly brary-related sources widely. However, they from one page (1968) to 69 pages (one article in seemed to prefer library and information science 1972). Although the range of individual article sources. Of the top nine non-BMLA journals that length was wide, the mode was found to be five were cited more than fifteen times during the tenpages in a total of 70 articles (out of 403). year study period, only Science, JA MA, and Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(2)April 1977
291
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS TABLE 2
No.of citations
No.of items cited
Source Journal articles
1,285 (in 276 journals) 486
Books Government publications (NLM items in parentheses) Technical reports Conference proceedings Other publications Unpublished sources Total
179 (65) 135 74 103 48
2,310
1,577 571 227 (99) 161
82 108 50
2,776
Journal of Medical Education were included; see tempts to bring together a great variety of useful Table 4. source information for health sciences librarians, The six most frequently cited journals, together from about 900 nonjournal publications and 2,000 with BMLA, accounted for 43.3% of the total articles from 276 journal titles. 1,285 journal articles cited. It is also worth noting REFERENCES that a great majority of the articles cited in BMLA were less than fifteen years old (72.4% for 1. CHEN, CHING-CHIH. A systematic study of the literaBMLA articles cited and 75.1% for non-BMLA ture of health sciences librarianship. In: Grosch, Audrey N., ed. Frontiers in Health Sciences Liarticles cited). The mode time-lag for most of the brarianship, Extended Abstract Proceedings of the to two citations was one years. 75th Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Besides the results of this citation study that are Association, Minneapolis, June 12-17, 1976. p.49. given here, its most useful by-product is probably 2. __. Sourcebook on Health Sciences Librarianship. Metuchen, New Jersey, Scarecrow Press, the author's Sourcebook on Health Science Li1977. brarianship [2], in Part II of which about 3,000 pertinent citation sources are listed under selected broad subject categories. The Sourcebook at- Brief Survey of Public Information Services at TABLE 3
Broad subject
No. of journal titles
Library and information sciences Medicine Science Other
86 117 35 37
TABLE 4 Journal
Library Journal Special Libraries Library Resources and Technical Services Science JAMA College and Research Libraries American Documentation Journal of Medical Education Library Quarterly
292
No. of citations 54 47 35 35 34 32 21 21 16
Privately-Supported Medical School Libraries: Comparison with PubliclySupported Medical School Libraries BY CAROL ANN JEUELL, Reference Librarian George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences College of Medicine and Dentistry oJ'New Jersey Newark, New Jersey CECILIA B. FRANCISCO, Cataloger Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library Mt. Sinai School of'Medicine New York, New York JANE S. PORT, Associate Librarian for Public Services Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library Mt. Sinai School oJ'Medicine New York, New York
IN an attempt to define the extent to which the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc 65(2) April 1977
