Journal usage in NHS hospitals: a comparison report of total usage at an acute NHS Trust and a specialist NHS Trust in the North West of England.
Affiliation
Kostoris Library, Christie Hospital NHS Trust, Manchester, UK. sglover@picr.man.ac.ukIssue Date
2007-09
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
BACKGROUND: Health care libraries spend a large amount of their non-pay budgets on the purchase of scientific, technical and medical journals. In a typical hospital library in the National Health Service (NHS) North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA), this can represent between 80 and 90% of the collection development budget. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data were collected from 1 December 2005 to 30 November 2006 using COUNTER-generated usage statistics obtained from publishers' administration tools. Between the two trusts included in the study, 93 376 full-text article downloads were recorded; of these, 15 952 or 17.1% articles were downloaded from national core content journals via Proquest. Photocopies made by users for their own use were recorded whenever this data were available. CONCLUSIONS: NHS staff at the sites included in this study recorded a high volume of journal usage. There was a marked difference in usage patterns between the acute and specialist trusts in the study. The journals provided by national core content represented a much higher proportion of total usage at the acute trust (29.9%) compared with the specialist cancer trust (4.5%). This study supports the view that the local purchasing of journal titles is an important component of the overall journal-based information provision to NHS staff.Citation
Journal usage in NHS hospitals: a comparison report of total usage at an acute NHS Trust and a specialist NHS Trust in the North West of England. 2007, 24 (3):193-9 Health Info Libr JJournal
Health Information and Libraries JournalDOI
10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00720.xPubMed ID
17714174Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
1471-1834ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00720.x