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Library and Learning Resources Committee

The Library and Learning Resources Committee met twice during the year.

Electronic resources were topics at both meetings. Several specific titles, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, were discussed because the publisher had said that they might impose restrictions that would severely limit access by our users. Fortunately such threats never materialized.

The Library shared with the committee the results of its survey of Ovid and PubMed users. A majority of those surveyed preferred Ovid Medline. The committee was informed that OVID and a number of other products would have to be discontinued, despite their popularity, because of mandated budget adjustments. We discussed the possibility of charging for electronic access as well as moving the Library downtown at some future date to be nearer the research park.  After much discussion, the consensus was that neither of these should be recommended. However, it was felt necessary for the Library to provide a detailed, five-year plan addressing Library needs in the future.

A number of other products evaluated by Library staff were demonstrated, including Journal Citation Reports, CogNet from MIT, E-Medicine, UpToDate, and MDLinx.

The committee was informed that the Library had completed its evaluation of automated interlibrary loan systems and was prepared to recommend that the Library purchase Iliad from OCLC and Atlas Systems, Inc. The new system will streamline the document delivery process and maintain better records which, in turn, should allow us to enforce copyright restrictions as well as provide better service to the individual ILL customer.

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