BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
same information, as well as the subject heading. The accession number and subject heading appear also on each individual slide. The accession numbers on the slides are followed by Roman numerals indicating the location of each slide in the holder-individual slides do not have separate accession numbers. An adhesive label on the issue card indicates the number of slides in that holder. An adapted Newark issue system is in use, since our library is not large enough for a mechanized system. Issue cards are signed by the borrower. When issued, each slide holder is put into a separate envelope that carries the due date and a form on which comment regarding the quality of the slides is invited. TERMINOLOGY
A serious attempt at proper terminological control is made. We have found that problems with terminology start with inadequate or vague diagnoses, and continue right through to conflicting synonyms in different medical dictionaries and textbooks. For the audiovisual subject index a single term is decided upon and accepted, after consultation with the medical personnel and various sources. (This is the term which also appears on the issue cards and the slides). See references are made from all exact synonyms. All new acquisitions are checked against the master
file of accepted headings. Commercially produced audiovisual materials, which include films, records, tapes, and a number of slide sets and programs, are fully represented in the general and in the separate audiovisual catalog. The slide collection described above is at present only represented by a class card inserted in the appropriate place in the classified catalog to indicate that slides on the subject are available. Alphabetical subject indexing in both the general and the audiovisual subject indices leads the borrower to the slides. In spite of its relatively long existence, our audiovisual collection is actually still in its infancy. Borrowers have nevertheless always shown an interest in it, and despite the fact that it cannot be regarded as a representative one, circulation figures prove that a very real need for such a central collection does exist. Students and lecturers alike appear to enjoy browsing in the collection, and groups of students often select batches of sets and view them in the library's conference rooms. An audiovisual assistant is always available to assist borrowers. We feel that we have evolved a workable system Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
in handling this core collection. We expect extensive developments in the audiovisual sphere shortly, because of recent establishment of a Department of Medical Didactics. This department includes the production center for all audiovisual teaching requirements. With the vexing problem of slide handling under control in the library, we hope that our system may also prove useful in a wider application such as could be required in various departments, as teaching programs develop under the guidance of the new department.
Reclassification of a Small Hospital Library Collection BY ANNE COMPTON, Librarian J. M. T Finney Memorial Medical Library The Union Memorial Hospital Baltimore, Maryland
MANY medical librarians who manage small hospital libraries classified according to the Library of Congress or Dewey systems think longingly of reclassifying their collections to the National Library of Medicine system. But reclassification takes time and space, neither of which is available in abundance to most of us. At Union Memorial Hospital, though there was no space, I managed to recatalog a collection of 1,400 volumes in ten months in my spare time with the help of a library technician. Many such reclassification/recataloging projects are done piecemeal: new acquisitions are processed according to the new system, and the rest of the collection is converted when time allows. Our library does not have enough extra shelf space for this type of conversion. We had to do the reclassification "in toto." However, by completing all work on each volume, including the ;yping of spine labels, before any books were relocated, we were able to cut the physical transition stage to six days. Meanwhile, by adding a few extra activities, along the way we were able to accomplish three more major tasks: the groundwork for a machine-assisted manual circulation system was laid; the entire book collection was reaccessioned; and a very thorough inventory and weeding were achieved. The circulation system I adopted is one developed by Stangl [1]. This easily operated, lowcost, machine-assisted operation seemed to fit our requirements well. Users are issued plastic cards imprinted with their name and any other pertinent 379
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
data. When a book is checked out an electric imprinter is used to reproduce this information on a specially designed paper pocket. An extra copy of the main entry card is inserted in this pocket and forms the circulation record. A new card set was to be produced for each book during the reclassification project, so it was a simple matter to produce the necessary extra card for the circulation system at the same time. Aithough many libraries no longer accession books, I decided this procedure would be helpful in our situation. Volunteer workers, not library staff, handle our circulation desk and find it easier to match five-digit accession numbers than classification numbers. Accessioning the collection also gave us for the first time the accurate statistics needed in reports and budget proposals. PROCEDURE The first step was a comparison of the shelf list with the books actually on the shelf. As this was done the LC card number or the ISBN number of each title was written on the shelf list card. Editions were double-checked, and any title without a shelf list card was removed from the shelf so a temporary card could be made. This temporary card was then annotated in the same way with an LC card or ISBN number. If a book was missing, the date on which it was discovered to be missing was recorded on the card. Cards for missing books were filed separately in the shelf list and subsequently checked against the shelves once a month; cataloging information for these books was not obtained until they reappeared. Using the annotated shelf list cards, I searched the NLM's CATLINE to obtain the cataloging information for each title. It was much easier and quicker to feed in the LC card number or ISBN number than an author/title combination. Of course, in some instances, the author/title combination had to be used. At the same time, it was relatively simple to review and weed the older (pre-1966) titles in the collection because original cataloging was done for these books. Any modification of the CATLINE data (usually the NLM classification number) was noted on the printout, which was used to prepare the new main entry card. After the main entry card was typed, the LC call number of the book was written on the back. Cards for books that would not be part of the circulating collection were marked "REFERENCE." The old shelf list card was marked with a red check and refiled. If a book was withdrawn during the project the red
380
check indicated that the new NLM cards had been prepared and needed to be destroyed. A commercial company duplicated our catalog cards. We ordered the number of cards needed for each card set plus an extra card for each volume (referred to hereafter as "book card"). As each batch of duplicated cards was received, the original card (which now became the shelf list card) and the corresponding book card(s) were extracted; the rest of the cards became the new card set, and added entries were typed in the usual way. Each volume was now entered in an accession book by using the author/title information on the new shelf list card. Then the new accession number was written on the back of the card and also on the front of the corresponding book card (in the upper right-hand corner). Additions to the classification number, for example, volume number and year for series, were made on each book card. Now the LC call number (obtained from the back of the new shelf list card) of each volume was written on the back of a standard-size book pocket, and the appropriate book card was inserted into the pocket. (A red "X" was positioned prominently on the book card of any title that was to become part of the noncirculating reference collection.) Also, a spine label for each book was typed by using the NLM call number on the book card, and this label was also put inside the book pocket. The LC call number on the back of the book pocket was used to locate the book on the shelf, and the NLM classification number and the new accession number were written on the inside back cover of the book. The book pocket was not pasted in the book at this time so the spine labels could be kept secure and in order by filing the pockets upright in boxes by the LC call number (written on the back of each pocket). If a change had to be made or the book was withdrawn, the pockets were easy to find and remove. Meanwhile, the new shelf list cards were filed alphabetically by main entry for easy reference. In fact, as the project progressed, this file of new shelf list cards and the new card catalog were considered more reliable than the old card catalog for acquisition purposes. The next step was the labeling and rearrangement of the book collection. To prepare for this, the new shelf list was rearranged by NLM classification number. Then we took these cards in order and used the LC call number on the back to pull the book from the shelf (the shelf list card was put in the back of each book). Now the book pockets Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS that were arranged in order by LC call number (they contained the book card and spine label) were pulled, and the shelf list card, the book card, the spine label, and the information written on the inside back cover of the book were checked against each other to catch any discrepancies in the call number or accession number. Finally the spine label was attached to the book, and the book pocket was pasted in place. Since book cards for noncirculating reference books (marked with a red "X") were not needed, these book cards were destroyed. The book cards for circulating books should have remained in the pocket at this point but the purchase of the electric imprinter (necessary for the circulation system) had to be postponed so we decided to remove the cards and insert them at a later date. The newly labeled books were now put on the shelf. The first shelf was cleared out by putting the volumes on a book cart; another cart was used to transport the books back and forth from the work area to the shelves. By shifting the unprocessed books once a day, it was possible to keep things in fairly reasonable order during the six-day transition. CONCLUSION
REFERENCE 1. STANGL, PETER. A low-cost, efficient, machineassisted manual circulation system. Spec. Libr. 66: 421-425, Sept. 1975.
Library Service to Physicians in Washington State BY KAY F. DENFELD, Librarian WSMA Library Service Health Sciences Library University of Washington
Seattle, Washington THE Washington State Medical Association, in cooperation with the University of Washington, began offering full library services to WSMA members statewide in August 1975. The service was initiated on a trial basis and is now in its second year. A full-time reference librarian and a half-time clerical assistant were employed by WSMA and stationed at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Washington to utilize its collection, photocopy, and MEDLINE facilities. The service was patterned after the successful King County Medical Society Library Service, which entered a contractual arrangement with the university in 1971, placing a librarian and assistant at the Health Sciences Library when the society decided to discontinue operation of its inde-
This system was developed over the first six weeks of the project. Some of the steps may seem redundant, but the old files-card catalog, accession list, and shelf list-had to remain current throughout the changeover; new books acquired during this period were processed by both pendent library. Cooperative and contractual agreements such methods. I had not foreseen the necessity of crossreferencing the old and new systems so we had to as the King County Medical Society Library backtrack a few times at the beginning. It was Service arrangement exist between other AMA easier and less monotonous to work groups of 100 society libraries and local institutions. Crawford volumes through the procedure at one time. Also, [1] reported fourteen medical society libraries it spread the cost of duplicating the cards over a that had developed cooperative programs between 1964 and 1969. One of these was the Pennsylvania period of nine months. The total cost (not including labor) of the re- Medical Society in LeMoyne, Pennsylvania, which classification and recataloging project was ap- had a cooperative agreement with Pennsylvania proximately $750. The duplication of the cards State University in Hershey. No report was was the major expense, $500. CATLINE was used located in the literature, however, of a state at nonprime-time hours to cut the cost of obtain- association that had no existing library program ing the cataloging information to $200. Supplies but initiated a cooperative agreement with a local were about $50. I estimate that the cost of the new institution. circulation system will be $500 and look forward An information booth including a MEDLINE to implementing it in the next few months. demonstration was displayed at the September Our biggest concern, disruption of the collec- 1975 annual meeting of the WSMA. Information tion and inconvenience for its users, was alleviated on "How to Use the WSMA Library Service" was by using this procedure. I heartily recommend it also mailed to the membership. News notes anto other small hospital libraries. nouncing the service and its progress were Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
381
same information, as well as the subject heading. The accession number and subject heading appear also on each individual slide. The accession numbers on the slides are followed by Roman numerals indicating the location of each slide in the holder-individual slides do not have separate accession numbers. An adhesive label on the issue card indicates the number of slides in that holder. An adapted Newark issue system is in use, since our library is not large enough for a mechanized system. Issue cards are signed by the borrower. When issued, each slide holder is put into a separate envelope that carries the due date and a form on which comment regarding the quality of the slides is invited. TERMINOLOGY
A serious attempt at proper terminological control is made. We have found that problems with terminology start with inadequate or vague diagnoses, and continue right through to conflicting synonyms in different medical dictionaries and textbooks. For the audiovisual subject index a single term is decided upon and accepted, after consultation with the medical personnel and various sources. (This is the term which also appears on the issue cards and the slides). See references are made from all exact synonyms. All new acquisitions are checked against the master
file of accepted headings. Commercially produced audiovisual materials, which include films, records, tapes, and a number of slide sets and programs, are fully represented in the general and in the separate audiovisual catalog. The slide collection described above is at present only represented by a class card inserted in the appropriate place in the classified catalog to indicate that slides on the subject are available. Alphabetical subject indexing in both the general and the audiovisual subject indices leads the borrower to the slides. In spite of its relatively long existence, our audiovisual collection is actually still in its infancy. Borrowers have nevertheless always shown an interest in it, and despite the fact that it cannot be regarded as a representative one, circulation figures prove that a very real need for such a central collection does exist. Students and lecturers alike appear to enjoy browsing in the collection, and groups of students often select batches of sets and view them in the library's conference rooms. An audiovisual assistant is always available to assist borrowers. We feel that we have evolved a workable system Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
in handling this core collection. We expect extensive developments in the audiovisual sphere shortly, because of recent establishment of a Department of Medical Didactics. This department includes the production center for all audiovisual teaching requirements. With the vexing problem of slide handling under control in the library, we hope that our system may also prove useful in a wider application such as could be required in various departments, as teaching programs develop under the guidance of the new department.
Reclassification of a Small Hospital Library Collection BY ANNE COMPTON, Librarian J. M. T Finney Memorial Medical Library The Union Memorial Hospital Baltimore, Maryland
MANY medical librarians who manage small hospital libraries classified according to the Library of Congress or Dewey systems think longingly of reclassifying their collections to the National Library of Medicine system. But reclassification takes time and space, neither of which is available in abundance to most of us. At Union Memorial Hospital, though there was no space, I managed to recatalog a collection of 1,400 volumes in ten months in my spare time with the help of a library technician. Many such reclassification/recataloging projects are done piecemeal: new acquisitions are processed according to the new system, and the rest of the collection is converted when time allows. Our library does not have enough extra shelf space for this type of conversion. We had to do the reclassification "in toto." However, by completing all work on each volume, including the ;yping of spine labels, before any books were relocated, we were able to cut the physical transition stage to six days. Meanwhile, by adding a few extra activities, along the way we were able to accomplish three more major tasks: the groundwork for a machine-assisted manual circulation system was laid; the entire book collection was reaccessioned; and a very thorough inventory and weeding were achieved. The circulation system I adopted is one developed by Stangl [1]. This easily operated, lowcost, machine-assisted operation seemed to fit our requirements well. Users are issued plastic cards imprinted with their name and any other pertinent 379
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
data. When a book is checked out an electric imprinter is used to reproduce this information on a specially designed paper pocket. An extra copy of the main entry card is inserted in this pocket and forms the circulation record. A new card set was to be produced for each book during the reclassification project, so it was a simple matter to produce the necessary extra card for the circulation system at the same time. Aithough many libraries no longer accession books, I decided this procedure would be helpful in our situation. Volunteer workers, not library staff, handle our circulation desk and find it easier to match five-digit accession numbers than classification numbers. Accessioning the collection also gave us for the first time the accurate statistics needed in reports and budget proposals. PROCEDURE The first step was a comparison of the shelf list with the books actually on the shelf. As this was done the LC card number or the ISBN number of each title was written on the shelf list card. Editions were double-checked, and any title without a shelf list card was removed from the shelf so a temporary card could be made. This temporary card was then annotated in the same way with an LC card or ISBN number. If a book was missing, the date on which it was discovered to be missing was recorded on the card. Cards for missing books were filed separately in the shelf list and subsequently checked against the shelves once a month; cataloging information for these books was not obtained until they reappeared. Using the annotated shelf list cards, I searched the NLM's CATLINE to obtain the cataloging information for each title. It was much easier and quicker to feed in the LC card number or ISBN number than an author/title combination. Of course, in some instances, the author/title combination had to be used. At the same time, it was relatively simple to review and weed the older (pre-1966) titles in the collection because original cataloging was done for these books. Any modification of the CATLINE data (usually the NLM classification number) was noted on the printout, which was used to prepare the new main entry card. After the main entry card was typed, the LC call number of the book was written on the back. Cards for books that would not be part of the circulating collection were marked "REFERENCE." The old shelf list card was marked with a red check and refiled. If a book was withdrawn during the project the red
380
check indicated that the new NLM cards had been prepared and needed to be destroyed. A commercial company duplicated our catalog cards. We ordered the number of cards needed for each card set plus an extra card for each volume (referred to hereafter as "book card"). As each batch of duplicated cards was received, the original card (which now became the shelf list card) and the corresponding book card(s) were extracted; the rest of the cards became the new card set, and added entries were typed in the usual way. Each volume was now entered in an accession book by using the author/title information on the new shelf list card. Then the new accession number was written on the back of the card and also on the front of the corresponding book card (in the upper right-hand corner). Additions to the classification number, for example, volume number and year for series, were made on each book card. Now the LC call number (obtained from the back of the new shelf list card) of each volume was written on the back of a standard-size book pocket, and the appropriate book card was inserted into the pocket. (A red "X" was positioned prominently on the book card of any title that was to become part of the noncirculating reference collection.) Also, a spine label for each book was typed by using the NLM call number on the book card, and this label was also put inside the book pocket. The LC call number on the back of the book pocket was used to locate the book on the shelf, and the NLM classification number and the new accession number were written on the inside back cover of the book. The book pocket was not pasted in the book at this time so the spine labels could be kept secure and in order by filing the pockets upright in boxes by the LC call number (written on the back of each pocket). If a change had to be made or the book was withdrawn, the pockets were easy to find and remove. Meanwhile, the new shelf list cards were filed alphabetically by main entry for easy reference. In fact, as the project progressed, this file of new shelf list cards and the new card catalog were considered more reliable than the old card catalog for acquisition purposes. The next step was the labeling and rearrangement of the book collection. To prepare for this, the new shelf list was rearranged by NLM classification number. Then we took these cards in order and used the LC call number on the back to pull the book from the shelf (the shelf list card was put in the back of each book). Now the book pockets Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS that were arranged in order by LC call number (they contained the book card and spine label) were pulled, and the shelf list card, the book card, the spine label, and the information written on the inside back cover of the book were checked against each other to catch any discrepancies in the call number or accession number. Finally the spine label was attached to the book, and the book pocket was pasted in place. Since book cards for noncirculating reference books (marked with a red "X") were not needed, these book cards were destroyed. The book cards for circulating books should have remained in the pocket at this point but the purchase of the electric imprinter (necessary for the circulation system) had to be postponed so we decided to remove the cards and insert them at a later date. The newly labeled books were now put on the shelf. The first shelf was cleared out by putting the volumes on a book cart; another cart was used to transport the books back and forth from the work area to the shelves. By shifting the unprocessed books once a day, it was possible to keep things in fairly reasonable order during the six-day transition. CONCLUSION
REFERENCE 1. STANGL, PETER. A low-cost, efficient, machineassisted manual circulation system. Spec. Libr. 66: 421-425, Sept. 1975.
Library Service to Physicians in Washington State BY KAY F. DENFELD, Librarian WSMA Library Service Health Sciences Library University of Washington
Seattle, Washington THE Washington State Medical Association, in cooperation with the University of Washington, began offering full library services to WSMA members statewide in August 1975. The service was initiated on a trial basis and is now in its second year. A full-time reference librarian and a half-time clerical assistant were employed by WSMA and stationed at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Washington to utilize its collection, photocopy, and MEDLINE facilities. The service was patterned after the successful King County Medical Society Library Service, which entered a contractual arrangement with the university in 1971, placing a librarian and assistant at the Health Sciences Library when the society decided to discontinue operation of its inde-
This system was developed over the first six weeks of the project. Some of the steps may seem redundant, but the old files-card catalog, accession list, and shelf list-had to remain current throughout the changeover; new books acquired during this period were processed by both pendent library. Cooperative and contractual agreements such methods. I had not foreseen the necessity of crossreferencing the old and new systems so we had to as the King County Medical Society Library backtrack a few times at the beginning. It was Service arrangement exist between other AMA easier and less monotonous to work groups of 100 society libraries and local institutions. Crawford volumes through the procedure at one time. Also, [1] reported fourteen medical society libraries it spread the cost of duplicating the cards over a that had developed cooperative programs between 1964 and 1969. One of these was the Pennsylvania period of nine months. The total cost (not including labor) of the re- Medical Society in LeMoyne, Pennsylvania, which classification and recataloging project was ap- had a cooperative agreement with Pennsylvania proximately $750. The duplication of the cards State University in Hershey. No report was was the major expense, $500. CATLINE was used located in the literature, however, of a state at nonprime-time hours to cut the cost of obtain- association that had no existing library program ing the cataloging information to $200. Supplies but initiated a cooperative agreement with a local were about $50. I estimate that the cost of the new institution. circulation system will be $500 and look forward An information booth including a MEDLINE to implementing it in the next few months. demonstration was displayed at the September Our biggest concern, disruption of the collec- 1975 annual meeting of the WSMA. Information tion and inconvenience for its users, was alleviated on "How to Use the WSMA Library Service" was by using this procedure. I heartily recommend it also mailed to the membership. News notes anto other small hospital libraries. nouncing the service and its progress were Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 65(3)July 1977
381
