During 1970 it became increasingly clear that with limited funds from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), some mechanism would have to be found to control the ever-increasing interlibrary loan (ILL) workload of the Kentucky-Ohio-Michigan Regional Medical Library (KOMRML). It was obvious that NLM could not completely support the document…

A cost-benefit analysis of the 43-library, 260,000-title Midwest Medical Union Catalog of books, conducted from June 1973 through May 1975 under a grant from the National Library of Medicine, studied the 49 year-old catalog in the context of interlibrary loan activity of the Midwest Health Science Library Network. (Author)

In an attempt to break down interinstitutional isolation, a group of biomedical librarians developed an interlibrary loan agreement with the specific goal of promoting better access to biomedical information for health care workers in the Metropolitan Detroit area. This is a report on the development of that agreement, which includes the…

A discussion of the information needs of health professionals, the regional libraries organized to serve them, and some document delivery services of the Regional Medical Libraries Program. (LS)

Recounts the difficulties of bringing together state and regional programs in a nationwide system. (Author)

The Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan Regional Medical Library (KOMRML), a service organization made up of the libraries of ten academic institutions, has within a year created an identifiable organization. A questionnarie was sent to 440 participants in this organization to determine: (1) if it was one that was causing constructive changes, and (2) if the…

This interlibrary loan study was done in 16 health care institutions during two weeks in November, 1967 and two weeks in March, 1968. Each interlibrary loan requester was asked to record what position he held (attending staff, resident, intern, other staff), and whether his request was related to patient care, teaching, continuing education, or…

The first step in the services to be developed by the Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan Regional Medical Library (KOMRML), established under the Medical Library Assistance Act of 1965, is that of improving the document delivery service now provided by the 10 biomedical resource libraries which make up KOMRML. The study reported here was undertaken to…

The current trend in biomedical information systems is to decentralization. Starting with the Medical Library Assistance Act of 1965, various plans of organization have been tried for improving the national diffusion of medical information. In 1968 the John Crerar Library became the Midwest Regional Medical Library, serving as an intermediary…

Describes the growth, rationale, and operation of a no-charge cooperative formed in 1982 by group of small Australian health science libraries to combat rising costs of interlibrary loans (GRATIS), and its South Australian equivalent (GRATISSA). Membership, coverage, features, problems, applications, and future developments are noted. Nine…

A task force was appointed to insure that New York State's health information service programs were operating optimally. The task force was charged to review: (1) the effectiveness of the guidelines and assessment form as published in the "Manual for Assessing the Quality of Health Sciences Libraries in Hospitals"; (2) the present…

This syllabus for a continuing education course describes the OCLC system and considers how it can be used by health science libraries. The general governance and administrative structure of OCLC and its network affiliates are detailed, and the OCLC subsystems--online union catalog, serials, interlibrary loan, and acquisitions--and their major…

The lack of proximity to large information centers combined with limited budgets, resources, and expertise prompted the special libraries of Berks County, Pennsylvania, to attempt a network for interlibrary sharing. Information specialists from large an small industrial, medical, and public resource centers organized and operated a network of…

Describes an automated interlibrary loan request routing and referral system made available to U.S. biomedical libraries by the National Library of Medicine. The description covers the databases used and the systems modules that support various functions. The current status of the system and possible future developments are discussed. (six…

The viability of organizational change depends on the gradual institutionalization of innovations. There has been a history of planned social change in medical library organization. Stress was being felt in that library agencies could not meet user expectations. With the Medical Library Assistance Act, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) was…