ITM Library – Annual Report 2012

2012 turned out to be a fairly uneventful year for the library’s information resources. The number of journals, books and dissertations increased at a normal rate, but no new large e-journals or e-books collections were acquired, nor major new databases – except for the institutional UpToDate subscription, mainly for the benefit of our clinicians. As for historical collections we received a substantial number of specialized books and journals from the family of the late Dr. Gustave Helderweirt, the pediatrician who for many years worked at ITM as an immuno-hematology expert. The discontinued Leuven documentation center ATOL donated us a collection of global health related books.

Curiously the document delivery service was solicited considerably less than in 2011. The number of internal document delivery requests (4,818) decreased with some 25%, external requests (846) with 20%. This downward trend in service demand may well be the result of researchers (and their assistants) increasingly finding their way by themselves in the ever expanding platform of scientific literature made available to them. External requests, mainly from Belgian universities, remained at about the same level (1,368).

Also the DGD Framework document requests (850) decreased with some 30%. But let us not forget that for this group of customers 2011 was an exceptionally busy year featuring a 50% increase compared to the previous year. The number of deliveries for 2012 was actually higher than for 2010. Our most active partners remain INHEM (Cuba), PUCE (Peru), CDS-INAS (Morocco) and IPH (India).

The library’s home made Reference Manager databases now include 98,465 records. Registering and analyzing the institute’s ever increasing published scientific output continues asking for a lot of the library’s time and efforts, with permanent updates of the ITG Staff Publications database (14,550 records) and the TropMed Central Antwerp institutional open access repository (6,120 records) and various standard and ad hoc bibliometric analyses.

In February we welcomed Christina Van Dijk as a new library assistant replacing Els Mannaerts, and Mary Ann Jadem as an interim during the maternity leave of Noor Goemaere.

Institutional archives

The main tasks in 2012 were the finalization of the archives procedures and the improvement of English translations. At the end of the year most of the procedures were included in the institutional quality system.

Furthermore the introduction of a coordinated archives management was started with the appointment of an archives responsible and an initial version of a partial selection list for each of the supporting services. For 2013 a thorough archives questionnaire is planned that will result in custom made ordering plans and selection lists.

In general the preparations can be finished at earliest by the first quarter of 2015, after which an operational archives management can be introduced. An implementation plan for this has already been prepared.

Dirk Schoonbaert

Publication

• Schoonbaert D, Rosenberg V. Personal bibliographic systems (PBS). In: Bates MJ, editor. Understanding information retrieval systems: management, types and standards. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2012: 545-558.

2012 in Numbers

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