BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
collection of over 300 items and a collection of over 2,000 photographs provide context and visual support for the specific collections and archives. In addition to an archivist, two part-time assistants help staff the archives. Anyone wishing to use the collection should feel free to get in touch with us: write to Archives and Special Collections on Women in Medicine, Florence A. Moore Library of Medicine, Medical College of Pennsylvania, 3300 Henry Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19129. REFERENCES 1. CORNELL, WILLIAM M. Woman the true physician. Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book 46: 82-83, Jan. 1853. 2. Females as physicians. Boston Med. Surg. J. 53: 292-294, Nov. 1, 1855. 3. PRESTON, ANN. Reply (letter to the editor). Phila. Med. Surg. Rep. May 4, 1867.
MEDCORE: Commitment to Cooperation BY SANDRA K. MILLARD, Assistant Librarian GREGORY S. ANDRIATE, Media Resources Coordinator Medical Staff Library St. Peter's Medical Center New Brunswick, New Jersey
THE consortium is a practical and efficient way for small libraries to increase their resources, and for large libraries to offer more and specialized services to a diversified, continually growing user population. A recent innovation in the traditional model of the consortium as it is known in the library field has been developed in central New Jersey. The Medical Resources Consortium of Central New Jersey (MEDCORE), in operation since the summer of 1975, gives real meaning to the concept of cooperative effort among libraries. MEDCORE has neither paid staff nor central office for its administration. Membership in MEDCORE requires an institutional commitment to contribute freely time, experience, and expertise, as well as to share resources. Annual membership dues are $10.00 for nonprofit organizations and $25.00 for others. These nominal fees are used to cover expenses, such as the printing of union catalogs, which cannot be otherwise donated by members. A firm commitment to cooperation insures the smooth and efficient Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66(1 )January 1978
operation of the organization, with minimum costs and maximum benefits to individual libraries. MEDCORE developed from the need to share AV resources in compliance with the stipulations of an NLM grant.* This grant, awarded to St. Peter's Medical Center Library, New Brunswick, New Jersey, provided for the creation of one of the major health science audiovisual collections in central New Jersey, an area where few such materials were readily accessible. One of the primary provisions of the grant specified that resources purchased with allocated funds be shared with other teaching hospitals affiliated with Rutgers Medical School. In June 1974, librarians from eight teaching hospitals affiliated with the College of Medicine and Dentistry, Rutgers Medical School, met to determine the most efficient and effective way to implement the "sharing" provision of the audiovisual software grant. Methods of cooperative effort were discussed and an informal procedure for borrowing and lending audiovisuals among the libraries was proposed. At first, sharing was done mostly by telephone request, and by consulting the monthly lists of new purchases. Then the group realized it needed more structure, and the concept of a formal consortium was discussed. MEDCORE evolved out of these discussions. It was originally organized to provide a mechanism for sharing audiovisual materials. However, rising costs and relatively fixed budgets helped propel the consortium beyond this single purpose. The original boundaries of both the ideals and membership were reformulated and expanded. MEDCORE currently consists of twenty-four hospital, pharmaceutical, and specialized health science libraries in central New Jersey, which share all types of resources. OBJECTIVES
In the early meetings, goals for MEDCORE were discussed and the following were agreed upon in order to strengthen and expand the services of member institutions: 1. sharing all resources (books, journals, and audiovisuals) to allow small libraries to offer access to services and collections usually available only in large libraries, 2. providing continuing education to members of the consortium through scheduled programs and informal sharing of experiences, *This program was supported by Grant No. I G08 LM02153-01 from the National Library of Medicine.
57
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
3. instituting equitable distribution policy for interlibrary loans, based on the size of collections, and avoiding undue burdens on any one member, 4. maintaining statistics of interlibrary loans within the consortium as a feedback mechanism for evaluating the level of activity, and 5. facilitating health science research by expanding the base of information readily accessible to users. Currently, the bimonthly MEDCORE meetings rotate among member libraries, and include an informal information exchange period as well as a business meeting. Some MEDCORE librarians are new to medical librarianship, so the programs often deal with the fundamentals of maintaining a small health science library. Other programs have dealt with on-line cataloging, MEDLINE searching, computer-aided instruction, administrative viewpoints on consortia, and space-saving ideas for small and medium-size libraries. A brief tour of the library facility at each institution resulted in new ideas for utilization of both space and resources as well as new techniques in processing and maintaining materials. MEDCORE members have also found that by informally sharing individual exchange lists they can redistribute duplicate journals and fill in gaps in their own collections. Two union lists have been produced to facilitate the borrowing of materials. The MEDCORE Union List of Audiovisuals is a computergenerated catalog arranged by title with a subject index. Each member of the consortium holds a copy of the catalog. The loan of audiovisual materials is handled in a manner similar to the standard interlibrary loan routine. The only variations are that borrowing libraries sign formal agreements to assume responsibility for any damage to the materials while they are on loan, and all materials are exchanged via insured mail. The first edition of the MEDCORE Union Listing of Periodicals contains approximately 1,500 titles. Holdings information on a journal and a code for each library appear after the title. Following the format of the 1975 Union List of Periodicals at the New Jersey State College Libraries and the Rutgers University Libraries, the special procedure for requesting articles involved assigning each member library a ranking number based on the total number of title holdings. The term "subscriptions" was defined to include any item for which a library keeps holdings informa58
tion. The borrowing library requests the article needed from the lowest ranked library which holds that title (that is, the smallest collection). MEDCORE members have found that this system distributes requests equitably, allows smaller libraries to contribute services, and prevents larger libraries from receiving all of the requests. The second edition of the MEDCORE Union List of Periodicals is now in preparation. Title holdings for all consortium members are presently being entered into the Union Catalog of Medical Periodicals (UCMP) data base, developed at the Medical Library Center of New York. The new catalog, expected to be ready by the end of this year, will be a computer-generated printout of the joint holdings information of all twenty-four MEDCORE libraries. MEDCORE serves as a model for small specialized libraries interested in low-cost resource sharing. The combination of the traditional health science collection of a hospital library, in conjunction with the more specialized collections of pharmaceutical and special interest libraries, provides a diversified base of information from which the user can draw. The MEDCORE experience illustrates that twenty-four regionally contiguous health science libraries can join together for their individual and mutual benefit. Ac KNOWLEDGMENT
The late Paula Held, a librarian who was much involved with MEDCORE, provided the impetus for this article.
Effect of Fees on an Information Service for Physicians BY Lois J. LEHMAN, Librarian M. SANDRA WOOD, Head, Reference The George T. Harrell Library The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center The Pennsylvania State University
Hershey, Pennsylvania
AN Information Service for physicians in Pennsylvania has been provided by the George T. Harrell Library of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center since 1966. It is a wholly external program, only for physicians who are not a part of the Medical Center. In 1974, service fees were instituted. The changes occurring in the physicianBull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66(1 )Januarv 1978
collection of over 300 items and a collection of over 2,000 photographs provide context and visual support for the specific collections and archives. In addition to an archivist, two part-time assistants help staff the archives. Anyone wishing to use the collection should feel free to get in touch with us: write to Archives and Special Collections on Women in Medicine, Florence A. Moore Library of Medicine, Medical College of Pennsylvania, 3300 Henry Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19129. REFERENCES 1. CORNELL, WILLIAM M. Woman the true physician. Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book 46: 82-83, Jan. 1853. 2. Females as physicians. Boston Med. Surg. J. 53: 292-294, Nov. 1, 1855. 3. PRESTON, ANN. Reply (letter to the editor). Phila. Med. Surg. Rep. May 4, 1867.
MEDCORE: Commitment to Cooperation BY SANDRA K. MILLARD, Assistant Librarian GREGORY S. ANDRIATE, Media Resources Coordinator Medical Staff Library St. Peter's Medical Center New Brunswick, New Jersey
THE consortium is a practical and efficient way for small libraries to increase their resources, and for large libraries to offer more and specialized services to a diversified, continually growing user population. A recent innovation in the traditional model of the consortium as it is known in the library field has been developed in central New Jersey. The Medical Resources Consortium of Central New Jersey (MEDCORE), in operation since the summer of 1975, gives real meaning to the concept of cooperative effort among libraries. MEDCORE has neither paid staff nor central office for its administration. Membership in MEDCORE requires an institutional commitment to contribute freely time, experience, and expertise, as well as to share resources. Annual membership dues are $10.00 for nonprofit organizations and $25.00 for others. These nominal fees are used to cover expenses, such as the printing of union catalogs, which cannot be otherwise donated by members. A firm commitment to cooperation insures the smooth and efficient Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66(1 )January 1978
operation of the organization, with minimum costs and maximum benefits to individual libraries. MEDCORE developed from the need to share AV resources in compliance with the stipulations of an NLM grant.* This grant, awarded to St. Peter's Medical Center Library, New Brunswick, New Jersey, provided for the creation of one of the major health science audiovisual collections in central New Jersey, an area where few such materials were readily accessible. One of the primary provisions of the grant specified that resources purchased with allocated funds be shared with other teaching hospitals affiliated with Rutgers Medical School. In June 1974, librarians from eight teaching hospitals affiliated with the College of Medicine and Dentistry, Rutgers Medical School, met to determine the most efficient and effective way to implement the "sharing" provision of the audiovisual software grant. Methods of cooperative effort were discussed and an informal procedure for borrowing and lending audiovisuals among the libraries was proposed. At first, sharing was done mostly by telephone request, and by consulting the monthly lists of new purchases. Then the group realized it needed more structure, and the concept of a formal consortium was discussed. MEDCORE evolved out of these discussions. It was originally organized to provide a mechanism for sharing audiovisual materials. However, rising costs and relatively fixed budgets helped propel the consortium beyond this single purpose. The original boundaries of both the ideals and membership were reformulated and expanded. MEDCORE currently consists of twenty-four hospital, pharmaceutical, and specialized health science libraries in central New Jersey, which share all types of resources. OBJECTIVES
In the early meetings, goals for MEDCORE were discussed and the following were agreed upon in order to strengthen and expand the services of member institutions: 1. sharing all resources (books, journals, and audiovisuals) to allow small libraries to offer access to services and collections usually available only in large libraries, 2. providing continuing education to members of the consortium through scheduled programs and informal sharing of experiences, *This program was supported by Grant No. I G08 LM02153-01 from the National Library of Medicine.
57
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
3. instituting equitable distribution policy for interlibrary loans, based on the size of collections, and avoiding undue burdens on any one member, 4. maintaining statistics of interlibrary loans within the consortium as a feedback mechanism for evaluating the level of activity, and 5. facilitating health science research by expanding the base of information readily accessible to users. Currently, the bimonthly MEDCORE meetings rotate among member libraries, and include an informal information exchange period as well as a business meeting. Some MEDCORE librarians are new to medical librarianship, so the programs often deal with the fundamentals of maintaining a small health science library. Other programs have dealt with on-line cataloging, MEDLINE searching, computer-aided instruction, administrative viewpoints on consortia, and space-saving ideas for small and medium-size libraries. A brief tour of the library facility at each institution resulted in new ideas for utilization of both space and resources as well as new techniques in processing and maintaining materials. MEDCORE members have also found that by informally sharing individual exchange lists they can redistribute duplicate journals and fill in gaps in their own collections. Two union lists have been produced to facilitate the borrowing of materials. The MEDCORE Union List of Audiovisuals is a computergenerated catalog arranged by title with a subject index. Each member of the consortium holds a copy of the catalog. The loan of audiovisual materials is handled in a manner similar to the standard interlibrary loan routine. The only variations are that borrowing libraries sign formal agreements to assume responsibility for any damage to the materials while they are on loan, and all materials are exchanged via insured mail. The first edition of the MEDCORE Union Listing of Periodicals contains approximately 1,500 titles. Holdings information on a journal and a code for each library appear after the title. Following the format of the 1975 Union List of Periodicals at the New Jersey State College Libraries and the Rutgers University Libraries, the special procedure for requesting articles involved assigning each member library a ranking number based on the total number of title holdings. The term "subscriptions" was defined to include any item for which a library keeps holdings informa58
tion. The borrowing library requests the article needed from the lowest ranked library which holds that title (that is, the smallest collection). MEDCORE members have found that this system distributes requests equitably, allows smaller libraries to contribute services, and prevents larger libraries from receiving all of the requests. The second edition of the MEDCORE Union List of Periodicals is now in preparation. Title holdings for all consortium members are presently being entered into the Union Catalog of Medical Periodicals (UCMP) data base, developed at the Medical Library Center of New York. The new catalog, expected to be ready by the end of this year, will be a computer-generated printout of the joint holdings information of all twenty-four MEDCORE libraries. MEDCORE serves as a model for small specialized libraries interested in low-cost resource sharing. The combination of the traditional health science collection of a hospital library, in conjunction with the more specialized collections of pharmaceutical and special interest libraries, provides a diversified base of information from which the user can draw. The MEDCORE experience illustrates that twenty-four regionally contiguous health science libraries can join together for their individual and mutual benefit. Ac KNOWLEDGMENT
The late Paula Held, a librarian who was much involved with MEDCORE, provided the impetus for this article.
Effect of Fees on an Information Service for Physicians BY Lois J. LEHMAN, Librarian M. SANDRA WOOD, Head, Reference The George T. Harrell Library The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center The Pennsylvania State University
Hershey, Pennsylvania
AN Information Service for physicians in Pennsylvania has been provided by the George T. Harrell Library of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center since 1966. It is a wholly external program, only for physicians who are not a part of the Medical Center. In 1974, service fees were instituted. The changes occurring in the physicianBull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66(1 )Januarv 1978
