User services offered by medical school libraries in 1968: results of a national survey employing new methodology.
The breadth and depth of services that ninety-two medical school libraries offer to individual users were ascertained by interviewing the heads of these libraries, employing a standardized inventory procedure developed earlier (Bulletin 56:380-403, Oct. 1968). Selected aspects of the descriptive data obtained on services to faculty and to medical students are presented and commented upon. Comparisons with the findings of earlier surveys suggest that increases in the staffs and budgets of medical school libraries over the past two decades have gone largely to supporting a rapidly increasing volume of service, rather than to any striking increase in the breadth and depth of services. To facilitate summarization and comparisions among libraries the descriptive data were weighted and converted to quantitative measures; the weighting scheme was established by a group of five academic medical librarians to reflect the relative values the group assigned to different services. One of these quantitative measures, the percentage score for overall services relative to the optimal library, summarizes a library's services in a single figure. On this measure, medical school libraries ranged from 38 percent to 87 percent; the median overall score was 63 percent. Results of some exploratory analyses are described; these analyses attempted to find explanations for the observed differences among libraries and among geographical regions on the quantitative measures. Present and potential uses of the survey data for managerial and research purposes are discussed. One of the most important of these uses is in establishing and implementing standards-activities which should be carried out by the library profession itself-and recommendations are made for a program of such activities that is appropriate for the Medical Library Association.
D007993:Libraries, Medical; D008000:Library Surveys; D008722:Methods; D012577:Schools, Medical; D014481:United States