Survey Of Academic Library Subject Specialists Biology Medical Sciences

This study looks closely at the collection development and spending plans of library specialists in medicine and biology, predominantly from major academic institutions, but also including some corporate libraries and smaller colleges. The study covers overall budgetary allocations for medicine and biology, with time series data, as well as data for spending on eBooks, books, journals, databases, and other information vehicles. The study also reports on collection development plans for specific subject areas such as oncology, pharmacology, and evolutionary biology, just to name a few. The 100-page study also gives extensive data on the use of institutional digital repositories, trends in information literacy, relations with library patrons and many other areas of interest.

The report presents data from a survey of 180 medical and life sciences faculty from more than 50 research universities and medical schools in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland. The study gives highly detailed data on how faculty evaluate medical and other life sciences oriented libraries in medical and dental schools, schools of public health, and university departments of chemistry and biology, among others. Data is presented separately for evaluation of interlibrary loan services, databases, eBook collections and services, journals collections, data curation and archiving services, general reference services, knowledge and service of library subject specialists and other areas of library services. The study also presents commentary on what survey participants most like and dislike about their medical or academic libraries, how often they visit, and how productive their library is compared to other departments or services that serve the life sciences at their universities and medical schools.Data is broken out by more than 10 criteria, and is presented separately for public and private universities, by age, gender, academic title, country, academic field, university ranking, level of tuition and other variables. Just a few of the report¿s many findings are that: ¿24.24% of those sampled were highly satisfied with their library¿s interlibrary loan services. Only 4.88% of faculty sampled in universities with a US News & World Report ranking below 135 were highly satisfied with their eBook collections, much lower satisfaction ratings than for more highly ranked universities. Medical school faculty were much happier than those in other schools or faculties with their library¿s data curation and archiving services; 27.66% of medical school faculty were highly satisfied.For library information technology, men were in general easier to please than women; nearly 26% of the men were highly satisfied with the library¿s information technology vs. only 16.44% of women.

The report presents data from a survey of 180 medical and life sciences faculty from more than 50 research universities and medical schools in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and Ireland. The study gives highly detailed data on how faculty access scholarly and scientific journals, including data on preferences for paper or print journals, use of Google Scholar, pre-print services and digital repositories. The report also reports on the frequency of asking librarians to add new journal titles, and on satisfaction levels with access to secondary data that supports scientific findings but may not be actually be part of the text of a journal article.Data is broken out by more than 10 criteria, and is presented separately for public and private universities, by age, gender, academic title, country, academic field, university ranking, level of tuition and other variables. Just a few of the report¿s many findings are that: ¿Journals in paper format was preferred to online format by 10.92% of respondents¿Age strongly and positively correlated with the tendency to have requested that the library add a journal title; the older the faculty member the more likely he or she was to have made such a request.¿Faculty satisfaction with access to supplementary data related to journal articles but not necessarily appearing in them was by far the greatest in Canada, where all survey participants were either satisfied or quite satisfied, and lowest in Australia/New Zealand where only 10% were satisfied and none quite satisfied.¿Institutional digital repositories accounted for a higher percentage than Google Scholar of time spent accessing journals from sources that do not charge ¿Approximately 47% of faculty in university departments of biology had ever accessed a journal article from a pre-print service.

Libraries and librarians have been defined by the book throughout modern history. What happens when society increasingly lets print go in favour of storing, retrieving and manipulating electronic information? What happens after the book? After the Book explores how the academic library of the 21st Century is first and foremost a provider of electronic information services. Contemporary users expect today’s library to provide information as quickly and efficiently as other online information resources. The book argues that librarians need to change what they know, how they work, and how they are perceived in order to succeed according to the terms of this new paradigm. This title is structured into eight chapters. An introduction defines the challenge of electronic resources and makes the case for finding solutions, and following chapters cover diversions and half measures and the problem for libraries in the 21st century. Later chapters discuss solving problems through professional identity and preparation, before final chapters cover reorganizing libraries to serve users, adapting to scarcity, and the ‘digital divide’. Describes how electronic resources constitute both a challenge and an opportunity for libraries Argues that librarians can re-define themselves Puts the case that libraries can be reorganized to optimize electronic resource management and information services based on contemporary technology and user needs

First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.