Selecting Heritage/BookshelF‐PC for the District Library, Queen Mary's University Hospital, Roehampton

Abstract

The District Library at Queen Mary's University Hospital, Roehampton provides a comprehensive service to all staff employed by the National Health Service within the boundaries of Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton Health Authority. In 1987 the library moved into a new building which is shared with the postgraduate medical centre. The stock consists of approximately 3000 books and 180 current journal titles. There is one full‐time librarian and at the time of buying BookshelF‐PC only one assistant for 18 hours a week. There is an annual issue of books of about 3000 and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control the stock. Being so short staffed meant that activities other than stock control, such as inter‐library loans and literature searching took precedence. Overdues were issued very infrequently, and since the readers filled in their own issue slips it was often impossible to match the slip to a book or a reader. There was also no way of keeping a check on readers who were leaving the hospital (and with junior doctors staying only six months, and medical students only six weeks this was important), nor readers who had not completed membership forms before borrowing books. The District Library is part of a cooperative network of libraries within the South West Thames (SWT) Region and already contributed to the union catalogue of books held on the regional database. This database is administered from the SWT Regional Library Service at Guildford using the INMAGIC software; individual library records are sent to Guildford where they are added to the database. Participating libraries receive back a disc to update their own local database of stock and a microfiche copy of the whole database.