ITM Library – Annual Report 2011

At the start of 2011 the availability of online journals received a boost with the licencing of the CEBAM Digital Library for Health distributed by the Belgian Evidence-BAsed Medicine Center. Next to the individual journal subscriptions and large collections like Ebsco Medline with Full Text (1,500 journals) the Wiley Online Library (1,200 journals), the Mary Ann Liebert collection and the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) collection, now 700 additional biomedical Elsevier, over 1,000 Springer and 350 Lippincott Williams and Wilkins (LWW) journals can now be accessed directly by our patrons. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) currently lists some 7,400 free journals (but obviously a large part of them have no biomedical content).

With this substantially enhanced direct access potential, somewhat surprisingly the number of internal document delivery requests (6,444) still increased with 12%, but this year we were able to deliver more items from our own (mostly digital) resources and had to rely less on external providers (-32% compared to 2009). The overall success rate exceeded 95%. External requests, mainly from Belgian universities, remained at the same level (1,473). Individual books and e-books collections increased on a normal level, but the CEBAM DLH offers access to some 4,000 Ebrary e-books and lots of useful evidence based medicine resources.

The DGD Framework document delivery service handled 1,207 requests, i.e. some 50% more than in 2010, for partners in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia (mostly PUCE, INHEM, CDS-INAS, IPH, UPCH, NIMPE and IMTPK). In September Mouloud Ben Abbou, librarian of the Rabat Centre de Documentation en Sant‚ de l’Institut National d’Administration Sanitaire (CDS-INAS), attended a one weeks technical workshop at our library to explore optimal solutions for the planned conversion of the INAS Inmagic databases to the Reference Manager format. This project was concluded successfully.

The library’s own Reference Manager databases now include 95,500 records. Keeping track of the institute’s ever increasing scientific output asked for ever more of the library’s time and efforts: permanent updates ITG Staff Publications database (13,830 records), and the TropMed Central Antwerp institutional open access repository (5,634 records); bibliometric report on the 2010 publications; preparation of the new PURE academic information system to be launched in 2012; creation of a new tool to calculate individual, unit and department output metrics based on journal impact factor (JIF) values.

Following Lenny Rhine’s ITM seminar on Hinari: improving access to biomedical and health information for researchers and practitioners in developing countries last year, the library itself organized practical Hinari sessions for our masters students. Optional library tours and introductions to the available resources for information retrieval were included in ITM’s new courses@work educational initiative.

Dirk Schoonbaert

2011 in Numbers

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