Despite major economic and organizational changes in the pharmaceutical industry, the Pharmaceutical Library Task Force (Arbeitskreis Pharma-Bibliotheken) has been going strong in the Medical Library ...Working Party (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für medizinisches Bibliothekswesen – AGMB) for the past 18 years. However, Task Force discussion topics have moved away from questions about spatial or staffing expansion or building up inventory, and toward themes such as outsourcing, training, technology scouting, and building up comprehensive copyright expertise. While actual physical stock is shrinking or has been eliminated entirely from many company libraries, the everyday working lives of company librarians are increasingly taken up with management of electronic media, in-house marketing and the associated user training, evaluation and use of new technologies, and clarification of complex copyright issues. Widespread know-how, in-depth knowledge of specialist areas (such as copyright), communication skills, networking, cost awareness, adaptability, willingness to learn new things, and demonstrating the value they add to the company are the factors that will secure the future of company librarians, whether with – or, in a pinch – without a physical library.
The official pharmacopoeias in the central library of Boehringer Mannheim, a research-based German pharmaceutical company, are taken as an example to demonstrate the switch from printed versions to ...electronic media. Preparatory work, practical procedure and results of this action are shown. Motives for the switch, economic questions and the consequences for all persons involved are described.
For some months the central library of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, a researchbased pharmaceutical company in Germany, has been disseminating tables of contents in electronic form. These electronic ...tables of contents are generated from the current scientific journal literature. At present the library supplies contents pages of roughly 440 journals to 240 internal clients. This service has been designed as a means of rapid distribution of individually tailored information from the topical scientific literature. The tables of contents are delivered to the clients' electronic mailboxes via the electronic mail system. We describe the situation before the introduction of this service, the motives for switching to this service, and the librarian and technical work necessary in the preliminary stages. Moreover, the paper shows the realisation of the project, the problems occurring during the phase of introduction and the acceptance by the users.
The Boehringer Mannheim Library (Germany) switched its loose-leaf pharmacopoeias from printed versions to electronic media. Discusses the decision-making and implementation process, and considers ...costs, technical requirements, availability of databases, user acceptance, installation, maintenance, and skills needed. Found that electronic media would improve library services and information flow within the company at reduced costs. (LAM)
For some months the central library of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH, a research-based pharmaceutical company in Germany, has been disseminating tables of contents in electronic form. These electronic ...tables of contents are generated from the current scientific journal literature. At present the library supplies contents pages of roughly 440 journals to 240 internal clients. This service has been designed as a means of rapid distribution of individually tailored information from the topical scientific literature. The tables of contents are delivered to the clients' electronic mailboxes via the electronic mail system. We describe the situation before the introduction of this service, the motives for switching to this service, and the librarian and technical work necessary in the preliminary stages. Moreover, the paper shows the realisation of the project, the problems occurring during the phase of introduction and the acceptance by the users.
Differing results of the same search request processed on different hosts led the authors to investigate this issue more thoroughly. Two authors, two journal titles, two drug names, and two topics of ...a general medical nature were retrieved under identical circumstances and conditions on the hosts DATA-STAR11Since 1995 the hosts DIALOG and DATA-STAR have adopted the name KNIGHT-RIDDER. Both hosts continue working with their own specific retrieval systems dating from the time before the takeover of DATA-STAR by DIALOG (Knight-Ridder)., DIALOG1, DIMDI, and STN. Comparing the figures revealed that none of the nine search requests produced an identical result onallhosts. Some of the search results differed only slightly, while the searches in the basic index produced considerable discrepancies.
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