BMA library print stock selection and retention policy
11 November 2005
Introduction
This policy was developed in 1990 at the request of the BMA Board of Science and Education to provide a formal record of the BMA library's stock selection, retention and disposal policies and procedures. It has been modified as priorities and areas of interest have responded to changes in medical practice and supporting technologies.
The BMA library follows a set of collection development policies and has systematic stock selection and retention policies. These have been worked out to develop those areas of the library's collections which are in most demand from members, and to make the most effective use of the acquisitions budgets and of the available space.
The library benefits greatly from the generosity of the BMJ and individual Association members. The BMA book competition is also a rich source of high-quality books. The volume of medical publishing makes it impossible for general medical libraries such as the BMA library to adopt a policy of comprehensiveness. Considerations of space and administrative costs alone make this impractical. To make the best use of available resources, the library's professional staff have established a set of general policies which fit our understanding of the requirements of members.
Collection policy
Core collection areas. In four general subject areas, the collection policy objective is to develop and maintain the best collections in any British medical library
- Current clinical practice
- Use of information and computer systems in medical practice
- History of the BMA and BMJ
- Medical videos
- Medical ethics
- Medico-political issues
- Quick reference
- Evidence-based medicine
- Subjects dealt with by major BMA reports
Stock selection policy and procedures
All the professional staff of the library participate in stock selection decisions, coordinated by the deputy librarian as part of their overall responsibility for the development of the collections. The policy aspects of stock selection follow on logically from the collection policies outlined above and seek to maintain adequate stocks of up-to-date and authoritative works in all our core areas.
As a general principle, the library stocks all the clinical material listed in the Health Information Working Party's Core collection of medical books and journals.
Journals. The range of current serials taken by the library varies little from one year to the next. In trying to cover the whole field of clinical medicine on a limited budget, the BMA library naturally tends towards conservatism - subscribing to the established, core journals in each specialism and varying the subscription base little from year to year. There are good reasons why this should be so. Two examples: for journals, being regarded by the profession as the basic authoritative source tends to be a strongly self-reinforcing process; a constant chopping and changing of subscriptions results in a library having many broken journal sequences, and incomplete holdings of a title are a constant irritation to library users - particularly as in our situation where the overwhelming majority of our users know the BMA library only through postal or telephone contacts. A decision to subscribe to a new journal title is taken only after consideration of the library's professional staff, and usually with advice from one or more practitioners in the relevant discipline. It is expected that the number of current journal subscriptions will decline as networks replace print as the primary resource for scholarly communication.
Books. The selection of new books, by contrast, is a regular and systematic process. The person opening the library's post is responsible for building up the monthly stock selection folder, which contains all the publishers' promotional material, catalogues, bibliographies, booksellers' lists, etc that arrive addressed to various members of staff. Each month, the folder is circulated to the library's professional staff who mark up anything they feel might be worth buying. Books requested by members are generally purchased if they are likely to be of general interest - more esoteric material is obtained via inter-library loan.
The library profession has well-established criteria for helping to decide whether an item is worth buying. Mostly these are obvious - eg the reputation of the publisher, provenance and reputation of the author, extent of revision from previous edition. In addition, however, purchase decisions depend a great deal on the experience and subject knowledge of the senior professional staff - of the extent and up-to-dateness of the collections in particular subjects, of medical publishing as a whole, and (most important) of the requirements of our user population.
Retention policy
Considerations of space make it essential for the library to operate a coherent policy on the retention and disposal of out-of-date material. For the past 8 years, the following policies have been in operation:
Serials. Back issues are retained for as long as the information they contain is likely to be of interest to the membership. For core serials, that in effect means permanent retention. Invariably, little-used titles are disposed of altogether rather than having their early volumes discarded. A very few ephemeral serials, such as computer magazines, are retained only for a short period.
Reference. All quick-reference material is renewed regularly. Heavily used or fast-changing books are updated annually, others on a longer cycle as appropriate.
Monographs. Core collection material is normally retained for 25 years, other books for 15 years. Some material (eg in fast-changing subjects, superseded textbooks, old editions of standard works) is likely to be discarded sooner. A very few books of lasting value are retained indefinitely.
Videos. Titles are re-reviewed periodically, and stay in the current collection so long as the reviewers deem them useful and acceptable. At that point they are relegated to the Archive collection, where they are retained indefinitely.
Disposal
New books and journals. Donated material which does not fit with the collection policies described above, or which results in unnecessary duplication of titles, is sent to a disposal agency where it is reallocated to a library in a low-income country.