TALON-The First Five Years BY DONALD D. HENDRICKS, PH.D., Directorof Libraries Director of the South Central Regional Medical Library Program The University of Texas Health Science Center Dallas, Texas

ABSTRACT The South Central Regional Medical Library Program, Region IX in the national network of medical libraries, was one of the last to be organized and funded. The particular makeup of this organization has permitted a good deal of flexibility in the identification and implementation of various types of network services and activities. The following is a brief account of some of these network functions during the first five years relating the successes and failures in network strategies and describing the further evolution of programs and refinement of a regional plan which will advance network services.

THE South Central Regional Medical Library Program* grew out of an organization known as the Texas Council of Health Sciences Libraries formed in 1966 [1]. Complete minutes of this organization are extant, and reveal the purposes, activities, and concerns of the group. The record also shows the evolution of regional network planning, especially in the modification of concept from a regional library or branch of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to the organization of a decentralized system of libraries. There were fourteen members at the time of the ratification of the constitution and bylaws. The purpose of the council was stated as follows: ... shall be to foster cooperative programs among the health science libraries of the state and to sponsor the exchange of duplicate materials, the pursuit of goals beneficial to Health Science Libraries; by assistance in the development of resources and improvements of effective communications, information, and services to all segments of the health science community [2].

Minutes of the subsequent meetings showed the council's concern along the lines stated in the purposes. The minutes of the initial meeting on July 9, 1966, indicated very clearly that one of the purposes of the group, ". . . was to consider the *Acronymically known as TALON for the participating states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 64(2)April 1976

possibility of organizing a regional medical library system as defined in the Medical Library Assistance Act of 1965." As early as the meeting of December 10, 1966, a representative of NLM was in attendance and discussed regional libraries. By September of 1967, directors of libraries in the other four states forming TALON were guests at a Texas Council meeting. On December 4, 1967, the actual content and format of a grant proposal was discussed. A letter of intent was drafted by Dr. Charles A. LeMaistre, (then Vice-Chancellor for Health Affairs of The University of Texas System), and directed to Dr. Martin M. Cummings, Director of the National Library of Medicine. The grant application was duly submitted, acted upon after a site visit, approved and funded to begin on January 1, 1970. Although the events during the period 1966-70 would be an interesting study in terms of personalities, policies, and philosophies, this report only attempts to review the activities since the formal establishment of the South Central Regional Medical Library Program (RMLP). "ISLANDS OF REFERENCE" The Texas Council did not have a myopic view of library cooperation based on the search for federal funding. As Wilson S. Fahlberg, member of the faculty at Baylor Medical College, Houston, and a Texas Council member, pointed out in a 1968 progress review: Since 1965 the group has achieved a number of noteworthy goals. (1) Members have arranged for an exchange of duplicate books and journals, (2) participated in the development of a rapid communication system between institutions (Teletypewriter Exchange Service-TWX), (3) established an educational training committee that held the workshops attended by sixtyseven individuals, (4) conducted a survey of library resources, (5) initiated a photocopy service among members and (6) invited medical libraries in the surrounding states to our meetings and discussed the feasibility of founding a five-state regional medical library.

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DONALD D. HENDRICKS

He went on to state: . . a consortium of libraries can effectively plan their acquisitions to insure a comprehensive coverage of the world's current medical literature within this region and as guardians of the past we must selectively enlarge and enrich our historical collections. The computerization of our respective periodical holdings by C. Lee Jones will enable us to predict our present and future requirements and to effectively plan for them. It is essential that we collectively participate in the establishment of the television and communication networks in the five states. We are not solely purveyors of the printed word, but also the spoken word and the visual picture. The dissemination of knowledge in its manifold forms is our responsibility. We must be prepared to translate, transcribe and transmit all aspects of medical, biological and related information. Our libraries must function as islands of reference for teaching institutions, the medical, dental, and allied health professions and qualified people seeking specialized knowledge. We must be prepared to enlarge the scope of our training activities and teach allied health personnel how to seek information required of them [3].

A DECENTRALIZED REGION With this background, and as the group met and examined the resources and services needed to meet the purposes set forth in the NLM policy statement, it concluded that the area did not have an establishment which was of outstanding stature adequate to perform, by itself, the functions of a regional medical library. This factor naturally led to the development of a consortium of libraries acting as a decentralized regional library. The fact that each library, as a state or association-supported facility, had been serving a geographic region, reinforced the desire to

continue in a pattern that would provide established services. This kind of organization seems to work reasonably well because there are a number of approximately equivalent resource libraries in this geographic area. Although the libraries and the resources are not logically placed nor uniformly distributed, reasonable service areas have been identified. Briefly, the demographic characteristics of the region are as follows: The area represents 18.4% of the nation, 10.4% of the population, 6.7% of the health scientists, 13.6% of the hospitals, and 8.8% of the total number of hospital beds. These figures show that there are a large number of very small hospitals (59% have seventy-five beds or less), spread over a vast geographic territory. These statistics demonstrate the difficulty in promoting a rational network plan and extending services to health practitioners in remote locations. Service to this area is now performed by contract with twelve resource libraries. The size of the collections ranges from 41,000 to 162,000 volumes, and current serials received range from 1,300 to 3,600. Two of the libraries are newly developed and have joined the network since its inception. Table I shows the bibliographic strength of the region. Table 2 shows the level of activity as measured by document delivery at each resource library during the five-year period. Because of differences in reporting periods and the introduction of some new reporting categories and the deletion of others, Table 2 is not precise and columns will not add up. The table is included, however, because it reveals the scale of document delivery in the

TABLE 1 SOUTH CENTRAL REGIONAL MEDICAL LIBRARIES

Serials Texas Tech University School of Medicine Library (TTUSM) University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Library (OKUM) The University of Texas Health Science Center Library at Dallas (UTHSCD) University of Arkansas Medical Center Library, Little Rock (UAMC) Tulane University Medical Library at New Orleans (TULANE) The University of Texas Medical Branch Library, Galveston (UTMB) Louisiana State University Medical Center Library, New Orleans (LSU-NO) The University of Texas Health Science Center Library at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport (LSU-SH) Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library

(HAM-TMCL) Library of the Medical Sciences, University of New Mexico (UNM) Texas Medical Association Library at Austin (TMA) Total

204

Volumes

1,605

41,382

1,700 2,501

100,583 130,842

2,358 1,600 3,657 1,640

89,402 126,000 162,097 105,000

1,935 1,400

46,038 50,000

3,470 1,960 1,300 25,126

123,606 76,763 52,000 1,103,713

Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 64(2) April 1976

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TALON--the first five years.

TALON-The First Five Years BY DONALD D. HENDRICKS, PH.D., Directorof Libraries Director of the South Central Regional Medical Library Program The Univ...
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