The impact of library services in primary care trusts in NHS North West England: a large-scale retrospective quantitative study of online resource usage in relation to types of service.

BACKGROUND: Within NHS North West England there are 24 primary care trusts (PCTs), all with access to different types of library services. This study aims to evaluate the impact the type of library service has on online resource usage. METHODOLOGY: We conducted a large-scale retrospective quantitative study across all PCT staff in NHS NW England using Athens sessions log data. We studied the Athens log usage of 30,381 staff, with 8,273 active Athens accounts and 100,599 sessions from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2007. RESULTS: In 2007, PCTs with outreach librarians achieved 43% penetration of staff with active Athens accounts compared with PCTs with their own library service (28.23%); PCTs with service level agreements (SLAs) with acute hospital library services (22.5%) and with no library service (19.68%). This pattern was also observed when we looked at the average number of Athens user sessions per person, and usage of Dialog Datastar databases and Proquest full text journal collections. DISCUSSION: Our findings have shown a correlation of e-resource usage and type of library service. Outreach librarians have proved to be an efficient model for promoting and driving up resources usage. PCTs with no library service have shown the lowest level of resource usage.

Interlending and document supply trends in NHS North West health libraries 2003/2004 to 2006/2007.

BACKGROUND: The Library and Information for Health Network North West (LIHNN) represents health libraries in Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Isle of Man, Lancashire, Merseyside and Wirral. LIHNN members take part in a regional co-operative network supporting interlending and document supply. METHODS: Data were analysed over a 4-year period to identify trends and patterns. In addition, a literature review was conducted to compare trends seen in NHS libraries to those trends seen in other sectors and in other countries. RESULTS/TRENDS: Between 2003/2004 and 2006/2007 there was a significant drop in document supply activity reported by NHS North West libraries from 59 321 to 37 134 copies, representing a fall of 37.4%. During the same period, lending between libraries stayed constant. DISCUSSION: The NHS supplies a significant number of documents to its users and it is investigating a number of options to increase efficiencies. The observed fall in document supply activity has been reported in several sectors and has been attributed to a number of cofactors. Although the fall in document supply activity is expected to continue, a critical mass of information is likely to remain behind subscription barriers and this, in turn, will necessitate supply from external sources.

Accessing public health information: a preliminary comparison of CABI's GLOBAL HEALTH database and MEDLINE.

BACKGROUND: Access to a comprehensive public health index or database has been identified as problematic for health professionals. Public health literature contains many varied sources including reports, journal articles, and grey literature. Traditional biomedical databases such as MEDLINE often do not meet the needs of public health workers and researchers. AIM/METHODS: The aim of the study was to examine the unique content of the GLOBAL HEALTH database, by comparing it to the MEDLINE database. Pre-determined terms were used as baseline comparators where controlled vocabulary definitions in each database were sufficiently matched. Retrieved results were stored and compared using EndNote libraries. RESULTS: Results obtained from the terms used in the comparison study protocol suggest that the GLOBAL HEALTH database holds a high proportion of unique records in comparison to MEDLINE. The largest overlap of duplicates from the GLOBAL HEALTH database perspective came from the coccidiomycosis results set which contained 70.5% of references retrieved from both databases. Analyzing the results from a MEDLINE perspective, the subject with the largest overlap was dengue, with a 43% overlap. CONCLUSION: The results of this study show that the GLOBAL HEALTH database is complimentary to MEDLINE in the subject areas of public health and global health.

Journal usage in NHS hospitals: a comparison report of total usage at an acute NHS Trust and a specialist NHS Trust in the North West of England.

BACKGROUND: Health care libraries spend a large amount of their non-pay budgets on the purchase of scientific, technical and medical journals. In a typical hospital library in the National Health Service (NHS) North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA), this can represent between 80 and 90% of the collection development budget. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data were collected from 1 December 2005 to 30 November 2006 using COUNTER-generated usage statistics obtained from publishers' administration tools. Between the two trusts included in the study, 93 376 full-text article downloads were recorded; of these, 15 952 or 17.1% articles were downloaded from national core content journals via Proquest. Photocopies made by users for their own use were recorded whenever this data were available. CONCLUSIONS: NHS staff at the sites included in this study recorded a high volume of journal usage. There was a marked difference in usage patterns between the acute and specialist trusts in the study. The journals provided by national core content represented a much higher proportion of total usage at the acute trust (29.9%) compared with the specialist cancer trust (4.5%). This study supports the view that the local purchasing of journal titles is an important component of the overall journal-based information provision to NHS staff.

Open access publishing in the biomedical sciences: could funding agencies accelerate the inevitable changes?

BACKGROUND: Open access is making a noticeable impact on access to information. In 2005, many major research funders, including the Wellcome Trust, National Institutes for Health (NIH), and the Research Councils UK (RCUK), set out their position in a number of statements. Of particular note was the stipulation that authors receiving grants must deposit their final manuscript in an open access forum within 6-12 months of publication. OBSERVATIONS: The paper will look at the open access position statements issued by some of the major funding bodies in the biomedical sciences. The paper will also look at the models used by publishers to provide open or delayed access, such as Oxford Open from Oxford University Press, HighWire Press' delayed access policy, BioMed Central, and Public Library of Science (PLoS). There are now over 1.2 million articles in PubMed that are freely accessible via publishers' websites.(1) CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION: Could funding agencies accelerate the move to open access? The list of funding agencies supporting open access is growing. The National Institutes for Health and the Wellcome Trust have been joined by many of the world's major funders in biomedical research whose goal it is to make their research findings available with no barriers.