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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
Author(s) -
Glover Steven William,
Addison John,
Gleghorn Colette,
Bramwell John
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
health information and libraries journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.779
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1471-1842
pISSN - 1471-1834
DOI - 10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00720.x
Subject(s) - purchasing , service (business) , medicine , business , health care , library science , political science , marketing , computer science , law
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.