Abstract
Doody's Core Titles in the Health Sciences 2004 (DCT 2004) is the result of the collaborative effort of approximately 200 content specialists, medical library collection development experts, medical book wholesalers, and the publisher's staff. While the construction of the DCT 2004 is founded on some shaky methods and assumptions, it is still a valuable and welcome addition collection development tool. As a tool for health sciences collection development, the DCT 2004 lists and rates the preponderance of important texts in the basic, clinical, and associated health sciences. While not entirely successful, the developers of the list have given its conception and realization very careful consideration, and while not more objective than the Brandon Hill it purports to replace, the DCT 2004 is certainly less idiosyncratic in terms of it's selection and rating criteria. Notwithstanding its faults, the DCT 2004 is an important resource for health sciences librarians who are responsible for developing and maintaining monographic collections.
Highlights
For the last forty years, the Brandon / Hill Selected Lists of medical and nursing and allied health books have served as indispensable collection development tools in the medical library community
The librarians had help and support from colleagues, publishers, and medical book wholesalers, they essentially reviewed and made the selections themselves, and they never maintained that their selection process was anything but subjective
Each new list was published in the J Med Libr Assoc, and the Medical Library Association (MLA) sold reprints of the lists to medical book wholesalers, who, in turn, distributed the lists for free throughout the medical library community
Summary
Edition In most cases, the latest edition is listed, provided it was available for review. In terms of pharmacy from the associated health sciences and pharmacology from the basic sciences, core titles listed include: ASHP's AHFS Drug Handbook, 2nd Edition, 2003; Allen's Ansel's pharmaceutical dosage forms and drug delivery systems, 8th ed., 2005; Avery's drug treatment : principles and practice of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, 3rd ed., 1987;. To illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of the DCT 2004, psychiatry from the clinical sciences; pharmacy for the associated health professions and pharmacology from the basic sciences; and nursing theory are used. A way to resolve this seeming paradox is to acknowledge that while the DCT 2004 is inclusively comprehensive by covering most of the health http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/5 sciences, it is more selective in terms of what comprises any given discipline
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