Interlibrary Loan System Research Articles

ＭＥＤＬＩＮＫ電子情報ネットワーク

The Massachusetts Medical Information Link (MEDLINK) is a program of the Publishing Division of the Massachusetts Medical Society, publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine. MEDLINK's first project was to develop the Electronic Mail and the Interlibrary Loan System with the members of the Massachusetts Health Science Library Network (MaHSLiN). The system became operational in February 1985. This study reports the details of the MEDLINK Electronic Information Network.

中国四国地方における病院図書室の実態 ＩＩ 開設者別による観察，１９８０年，１９８１年の調査から

Information activities of hospital libraries are reported by types of institutions. There are 162 general hospitals in Chugoku, Shikoku area.: 64 public, 48 private, 39 national and 11 social welfare hospitals. In a total of 66 special hospitals, there are 55 private, 7 public, 4 national and no social welfare hospitals. A total of 146 among these 228 hospitals were investigated. Major findings are: (1) The public hospitals have more libraries and full-time library staff members than any other institutions. (2) As for the number of books held, the maximum was 20, 000 books in one of the public hospitals, and the minimum was 100 books in one of the private hospitals. (3) As for the number of serials received, the maximum was 150 titles for both domestic and foreign journals in one of the social welfare hospitals and the minimum was two for domestic and none for foreign journals in one of the private hospitals. (4) Only general public and private hospitals obtain information through the inter-library loan systems from university libraries and from foreign information networks. (5) About half of the hospitals where enough information for JMLA is available expressed their desire to join JMLA. However, even 7 or 8 percent of the hospitals where little or no information about JMLA was available expressed their desire to join JMLA.Through this investigation, it is recommended that JMLA propose minimum standards for professional health science library services in hospitals in Japan and that JMLA participate in their CE courses.

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

The author proceeds from the assumption that academic libraries (particularly research libraries) will soon be compelled to engage in more comprehensive, efficient, structured resource sharing than has been afforded by traditional interlibrary loan systems. This will require profound changes in collection policies and concepts of institutional responsibility and autonomy. Because human responses to change have rarely been explored in the library literature, this paper discusses individual, group, managerial, and organizational responses which have been described by researchers from other disciplines and which should be taken into account by resource sharing planners.

INTERLIBRARY BORROWING: COSTS AND BENEFITS

An assessment is needed of the factors that contribute to the cost of obtaining material on interlibrary loan. The main internal library resource involved is staff time, which must be used effectively as well as efficiently. The internal costs per loan at the British Library Lending Division are less than at other libraries, which would not benefit from competing with the Lending Division, though groups of libraries might supply ‘easier’ requests among themselves, through on‐line union lists or core collections of periodicals. Interlibrary loan systems should also be able to provide an urgent service for special cases, but it is not easy to reconcile the demands and the actual needs of users. Despite economic arguments for free distribution of information, some level of charging is a useful means of regulating interloan demand. Document delivery can be effected by acquisition for stock, referral to another library, or interlibrary loan, and costs and benefits vary for each method. It is concluded that libraries should be able to operate a cost‐effective interlending service by concentrating on items that users really need and by assessing carefully when interloans are most beneficial. At the same time, it is necessary to assess the effects of new procedures and technologies at local level on the scholarly and scientific communication system as a whole.

中国四国地方における病院図書室の実態

Information activities of hospital libraries in the Districts of Chugoku and Shikoku are reported. 219 hospitals were sent questionnaires from August to October 1980, and 146 hospitals (66.6%) of which responded. Major findings are: (1) 128 hospitals have libraries, 17 of which have the full-time staffs. (2) Maximum number of books held is 20, 000 volumes, the minimum 100, and the average about 2, 600. (3) Number of serials received is 300 titles to 2 titles. (4) Annual budget for books scatter from 9, 500, 000 yen to 50, 000 yen and the average is 1, 820, 000 yen. (5) 112 hospital libraries responded that their patron doctors meet, though not too sufficiently, their information needs by any way. However, the number of libraries which gain the informations through the interlibrary loan systems from university libraries is 13. (6) The Japan Medical Library Association is not known by 88 hospital libraries (60%) at all. (7) 33 hospital libraries write some comments, in which a common demand is more helps from medical school libraries to small libraries.

UNIVERSAL AVAILABILITY OF PUBLICATIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Although the desirability of Universal Availability of Publications and Universal Bibliographic Control has been accepted by several developing nations its application presents considerable difficulties. Two of the main problems are that publishing is often done by authors, and the legal deposit systems are not always administered by the organisation compiling the national bibliography, therefore bibliographic control is very difficult. Basic library collections must satisfy a country's particular needs, and interlibrary loan systems should be used to complement them. Various political and currency problems also need to be overcome.

National information network in medicine

Necessity of establishing a national information network in medicine is beginning to be recognized in Japan.The trend has been more prominent in the United States where the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS is actually being operated with its satelite centers located in not only various parts of the country but also in England, in Sweden and now in Australia. Herner's design for a medical library and information system, recommended to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1966, was a plan of very large scale but it had many subsystems already in existence to build up the main scheme on them. The basic idea of this plan might be adaptable in planning our national information system but changes will be necessary to make it fit to our situation.In Japan, medical libraries are fairly active in literature providing services but not so in information services. For instance, out of 51 member libraries of the Japan Medical Library Association, only few of them are doing literature search as their regular service. But on the other hand, these 51 member libraries which include all of 46 medical school libraries, with the total of 3,754,808 bound periodical volumes and books, and subscription of 51,453 periodical (5,036 different titles), lent out 626,612 volumes to their areas, and sent to other member libraries 42,831 of their library materials and their photo copies as interlibrary loan in one year from April 1966 to March 1967. The association divides Japan into 9 districts to serve but the members are not divided evenly. In the case of Kanto district, there are 18 member libraries out of all 51 and they have 1,228,331 volumes, or 32.7% of all 3,754,808 volumes.The units which are to be included in the proposed information network in Japan are these, such as, a national center, district centers, specialized centers, data ceters, interlibrary centers, and the units with clearing house function.The national center will have a wholesale dealer's function in handling literature and switching information. District centers are depending on the national center for the supply of literature and processed information, but they are also the central unit in their own districts. Specialized centers collect all the materials in a certain special subject field, analyse their contents and provides an answer to the requested question in the field. Data center will do similar function but they will handle data and not information. For interlibrary centers which we don't have anything of the sort at the moment, will be set up after the model of the New York Medical Library Center.To carry out this plan, establishment of the national center will be the first and the largest problem of all. The Japan Information Center of Science and Technology (JICST) will be the only possible candidate for this though it is a new comer in medical field and it does not have a large enough medical collection nor experience of handling medical information.But the JICST decided to extend there serving fields to include biomedicine and agriculture. The JICST also is negotiating with the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda on setting up a MEDLARS' searching center in it. Therefore, with close cooperation from the Japan Medical Library Association and its member libraries, it can grow into a satisfactory national center. As for the district centers, 10 or 12 of the largest and most active medical school libraries should be selected and strengthened to make them possible to do their role. Specialized centers, data centers and inter library centers are the ones which should be built up from nothing. An inter library center will be necessary in each of the east and west Japan areas. The national referral center and an information center on “who's doing what research in medicine” should be established in the national center but with help in gathering the needed information for the service from the member libraries of the Japan Medical Library Association. The weak points of the plan are:The necessity of organizing a national network of medical information handling is not fully recognized by researchers, clinicians, and faculty members of the medical schools.There is no medical information system of any size which can be a core or a subsystem of the network, except the Japan Medical Library Association's interlibrary loan system.

The NEW BUCOP

The National Central Library took over the responsibility for continuing the publication of BUCOP at the beginning of 1962, and the work of compilation was added to the normal routines of the Periodicals Union Catalogue. Coupled with the decision of the council of the World list of scientific periodicals to merge with BUCOP after the publication of its fourth edition, this has had the effect of reducing from three to one the number of reporting centres for libraries disposed to co‐operate in national union schemes embracing serials. In consequence, the NCL's serial catalogue, which is in the process of revision so as to conform as a whole to the new BUCOP principles of entry and arrangement, has to serve two purposes: as a working tool in handling serial applications received in connection with the interlibrary loan system, and as the source from which BUCOP's ‘copy’ is made up. Since the NCL's own collection of serials is small at present, we are to a large extent dependent on the goodwill of the co‐operating libraries not only for information on the extent of their holdings of a particular title but also for details concerning the title itself. Naturally we have access to the large serial collections held by libraries in the vicinity of the NCL, although staff time available constitutes a limiting factor in this respect, and we are exploring ways of increasing the supply of information on new serial titles from the publishers; however, the manner in which libraries notify us of their holdings, and the form of entry they use, must inevitably remain important factors governing the work of compilation, underlining the need for a greater degree of standardization of practice in recording serial publications.

The RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF READERS AND LIBRARIANS

On the assumption that the majority of this audience works in technical and industrial libraries or information departments, of which I have no first‐hand knowledge, I have thought it prudent to devote myself to a general theme, which I hope is of interest to all of us, rather than to talk about techniques and methods which might well be irrelevant to you. I have already for the Journal of documentation tried to clarify my own ideas on the proper part to be played by special libraries in the national interlibrary loans system. I have based my remarks there on the assumption that every reader has the right of convenient access to any material that he needs, but I have suggested that it is the duty of librarians in different circumstances to establish priorities which will give privileges to certain groups financially supporting special libraries, and also that the national interlibrary loan system can only continue to work efficiently if borrowers (personal or institutional), intermediaries (such as the National Central Library, Aslib and the Science Library) and lenders all persistently ask the question ‘Is this a reasonable request?’ and thus prevent exploitation. Here, therefore, I should like to explore not so much the actual provision of material as the methodology used by the profession as a whole in this provision, and the relations between the profession and its clients.

A Proposed Interlibrary Loan System in the Seventeenth Century

world of scholarship owes many debts to the great French huI manist Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc (I580-i637).' Not the least of his claims to our recognition is his effort to establish a kind of interlibrary loan system between the Royal Library in Paris and the Vatican and Barberini libraries in Rome. In a period when interchanges of this sort were extremely difficult and entirely unorganized, he frequently acted as an intermediary in such activities. He maintained a vast correspondence throughout Europe and through his many contacts successfully acquired manuscript materials for many of the enterprises undertaken during his lifetime-such as the great compilations of French historical sources published by Andre Duchesne,2 the earliest Coptic studies undertaken in Europe,3 the important Excerpta de virtutibus et vitiis of Constantine Porphyrogenitus,4 and many others. His aid was frequently asked in obtaining materials, and his introductions abroad were often sought. Because of this position in the learned world, a unique opportunity was presented to him to arrange for an exchange of original materials instead of the copies with which his friends so often had to content themselves. In i630 Jean-Jacques Bouchard (i6o64I) had arrived at Aix-en-Provence on his way to Rome, whither he had considered it prudent to go after a scandalous affair with a chambermaid.5 He was highly recommended by Nicolas Rigault, at that time garde, or active librarian, of the Royal Library in Paris, as tres bien verse en la bonne litterature, ssait les langues Grecque, Latine, Italienne, et que j'estime encore plus, il est de tres bonnes mceurs et de conversation trds agreable pour sa grande ingenuite et candeur.6 He departed, consequently, with many recommendations to Cardinals Barberini and Bentivoglio, Lucas Holstenius, one day destined to be Vatican librarian, and others whom Peiresc knew,7 and was eventually taken into Barberini's employ and became a new I Peiresc, one of the most scholarly amateurs of his time, was not only an astronomer of some accomplishments but the promoter of research in nearly all the disciplines of the day. He has left an immense amount of correspondence as well as a large and important collection of notes, mostly preserved in the BibliothMque Inguimbertine of Carpentras and the Bibliothbque Nationale. A conseiller au Parlement at Aix-en-Provence, he was the friend and patron of the scholars of the seventeenth century. Among his friends were Guillaume du Vair, Malherbe, Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, Nicolas Rigault, Grotius, Andr6 Duchesne, and a host of others. See Pierre Gassendi, Viri illustris Nicolai Claudij Fabrkcij de Peiresc .... vita (The Hague, i655), and Pierre Humbert, Un Amateur: Peiresc (Paris, [I9331). 2 Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui (Paris, I6I9), and Historiae Francorum scriptores coetanci (Paris, I636-4a). See Gassendi, op. cit.,

American inter-library loan system

American inter-library loan system

Library Service in South Africa

IN his presidential address to Section F of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science delivered on June 29, 1943, on "Libraries and Science" (South African J. Sci., 40, 81.; November 1943), P. Freer referred particularly to the difficulties of book selection in scientific literature. He urged that this is not a matter for librarians alone, and that librarians should also do more to secure the writing and publishing of authoritative but simple and readable books on important subjects. After pleading for more care and co-operation in the discarding of surplus or unwanted stock, Mr. Freer indicates measures that are required for the full efficiency of the inter-library loan system. Until the master-catalogue of non-fiction in the libraries of the Union of South Africa is completed, as well as the publication of a new edition of the Lloyd's List of Scientific and Technical Periodicals, with a complementary volume covering the humanities, book-buying and discarding are both unscientific. As regards the imperfections and limitations of present abstracting and indexing services for scientific and technical periodicals, Mr. Freer notes that only forty-one of the three hundred abstracting and indexing periodicals in existence in 1937 were available somewhere in South Africa, and these periodicals only covered one third of the scientific papers concerned. He emphasized the need, for the advancement of science, of a highly trained staff and augmented resources to diminish the gap between the 6,000 titles in the Catalogue of Union Periodicals and the 15,000 acknowledged as being of international importance. Plans for postwar reconstruction contained no suggestions for a national library system, but in addition to national libraries, regional libraries and organization would be required. Finally, he referred to the contribution which science could, make to the improvement of the printed book itself and its preservation.