title: An experimental study of the feasibility of substituting Chemical Abstracts on-line for the printed copy in a medium-sized medical library.
abstract: The reference staff of the Washington University School of Medicine Library, in an attempt to consider an alternative way of providing the information contained in the printed Chemical Abstracts, designed a study to examine whether the on-line version of Chemical Abstracts could be substituted for the hard copy. For a thirteen-week period, all patrons using the printed index were offered a free computer search of Chemical Abstracts in exchange for evaluating the searches. Only 39.6% of those offered a free search chose to do so. Of these patrons, 62% still planned to refer to the abstracts later, which are only available in the printed index. The hypothesis that the on-line version could be substituted for the printed index was not confirmed.
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D002621:Chemistry; D007255:Information Services; D007993:Libraries, Medical; D007999:Library Services; D009862:Online Systems