Analysis of Interlibrary Loan Requests to the National Library of Medicine - 1984

摘要

In 1962, an analysis of requests for serials filled by NLM in 1959 was published. In the 25 years following 1959, important changes occurred in the biomedical library community which had significant impact on interlibrary loan activities, including the development of MEDLARS and online searching; the implementation of the Regional Medical Library network, and the growth of union listing for serials. To describe NLM's current interlibrary loan request traffic for serials and to identify any significant changes in traffic between 1959 and 1984, a comparative analysis of serial loan requests received in 1984 was performed, primarily by manipulation of automated request records. Data analyzed included title, publication year, country of publication, and language of items requested as well as information about requesting institutions. Findings show significant changes from 1959 to 1984 in the distribution of libraries using NLM and in the serial titles requested. The number of libraries using the NLM collection has doubled. The characteristics of the most frequently requested titles have also changed in the last 25 years.