ITM Library – Annual Report 2010

Apart from a few additional titles, online journal subscriptions remained stable, with an overal availability range of over 8,000 online journals (including open access journals). But while e-journals have been outshining the traditional printed editions for more than a decade now, until recently e-books were relatively scarce in the library. In 2010 we acquired a substantial number of e-books, either on a title by title selection base (MyiLibrary, Elsevier Expert Consult, Books@ovid) or as part of large e-book package deals such as SpringerLink. Also, login options into the library network from outside ITM were enhanced substantially.

TropMed Central Antwerp (TMCA), the open access repository of ITM’s scientific publications, was extended back to the year 1990 and now counts over 5,000 items, about 30% of these with full text in open access. Overall TMCA received 14,221 visits from 171 countries. In 2010 TMCA full text items were downloaded 153,671 times, 169 of which at least 200 times, 14 items over 500 times. As for internal access to ITM staff publications, with the additional e-journals and strategic retrospective digitization, over 90% of all 2000-2010 publications are now directly available from the database in PDF format.

In June Hafida Fakir and Rachida Cherqi, two colleagues from the Rabat Centre de Documentation en Santé de l”Institut National d’Administration Sanitaire (CDS-INAS), received a two weeks training at our library. In August it was Maria del Carmen Hinojosa, librarian at the Instituto Nacional de Hygiene, Epidemiologia y Microbiologia (INHEM) in Havana who joined us for the same purposes. The DGCD Framework document delivery service handled some 25% more requests than in 2009, for partners in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

In October Lenny Rhine (Medical Library Association and Librarians Without Borders) was our guest. He presented an ITM seminar on Hinari: improving access to biomedical and health information for researchers and practitioners in developing countries for an auditorium filled with interested staff and foreign students, the latter being the obvious beneficiaries of WHO’s Hinari program.

After 23 years of dedicated service, Veerle Demedts has now retired. Archives manager Kris Didden succeeded Veerle as assistant-librarian. Nele Verstraeten, an arts & musicology graduate with scientific library training, joined us in February to reinforce the library’s much appreciated document delivery (DocDel) services.

2010 saw the creation of a new storage room as well as the transfer of several parts of the historical archives to the central archives room. As a precursor to the institutional policy, a set of procedures to describe the appraisal, storage and ownership of records in case of reorganisation was created. A draft appraisal list was compiled from legislation and guidelines applicable to the Institute’s activities.

Dirk Schoonbaert

2010 in Numbers

* Individual e-book purchases (excl. open access)
** SpringerLink medical and biomedical collections 2005-2010