Membership of Canterbury Medical Library

The library is a joint function of the University of Otago Christchurch and the Canterbury District Health Board operating together to increase the accessibility of information for health professionals in Canterbury.

Membership of the library is available to staff and students of both organisations and to other health professionals at the discretion of the Canterbury Medical Library Committee.

If you wish to have further information about the library, including information on membership and charges, this available from the library's Website.

Committee Matters

Some recent issues discussed by the library committee include:

9 July 2009

This year a few journal subscriptions are electronic only, and in the years to come, we anticipate that many or most journal subscriptions will be electronic only. We have decided, that the library should only store the last two years of paper copies of journals when we have them. After two years the paper copies would no longer be shelved within the library. This year we will begin a series of reviews of journal subscriptions with a view to creating an ongoing review process for selection of the optimal journal holdings for a library of our size. We will choose selected areas, from the ISI list of disciplines, identify a key staff member in that discipline who should then consult as to optimal journal holdings. We envisage that changes to journal holdings will be by evolution, rather than by revolution

9 October 2008 - Feedback sought on the CML journal collection

The committee is constantly reviewing the journal collections. We seek recommendations for new journals and would also like to know whether any of our current subscriptions could be cancelled.

Purchase of any new journals will depend upon the cost of subscriptions for 2009 in relation to the library budget.

Note the link to our request form "Recommend a journal" to the right of this web page.

9 October 2008 - Policy on CML journals shift to online only

The committee has agreed a general policy that CML will move its journals to online only over the next few years. For more details see the Policy on Journals Shift to Online Only.

Provisos: There are a number of provisos to this policy, a journal could only be moved to online only where:

• a site licence to the journal is an available
• it is financially viable to make the journal available via both the hospital and university networks
• the content would be owned by CML
• the content is provided via a stable platform, and the publisher has made arrangements for preservation of the content in case of the publisher's demise

Archives: paper archives for older issues will be retained locally or within the University of Otago system until:

• paper archives are made available by the publisher on a stable platform
• are able to be purchased by CML

Access to online journals: To facilitate the move to electronic:

• The Internet has recently been made available within the library
• Training sessions on the use of online journals will be offered to all library users

Rationale behind this policy: The reasons behind the policy on moving to electronic include:

• A dramatic drop-off in the use of CML's paper journals
• Space constraints and the continuing growth in paper journal archives
• An uptake in the use of online resources by CML library users, pdf is now the preferred format for journal articles for most users.
• Potential financial benefits - less library staff time handling paper copies, online journals often less expensive than paper.

Science Direct and Wiley journals first to move to online only: will be the first journals to move since:

• the paper copies of these journals are now rarely used
• the online journals are available to both hospital and university staff and students
• the online journals are heavily used by CML library users

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Committee Info

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Draft Terms of Reference