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.


METHODS
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.


CONCLUSIONS
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.
Bell
Katherine
K
Primary Care Library, St Helens and Knowsley Informatics, St Helens and Knowsley Primary Care Trust, St Helens, UK.
Glover
Steven William
SW
Brodie
Colin
C
Roberts
Anne
A
Gleghorn
Colette
C
D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007993:Libraries, Medical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007999:Library Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000458:organization & administration; D017146:Models, Organizational; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013222:State Medicine / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006113:United Kingdom