Doctors’ use of medical journals. Is the hospital library’s collection an important source?

The purpose of this study is to find out how and to what extent doctors use the hospital library’s collection of print and electronic medical journals. Major changes have the last years occurred in the journal collection. The journals are very costly and little is known about the user satisfaction with them. Therefore it’s important to examine how satisfied the users are with the collection and how they utilize it. The main questions are: How satisfied are the doctors with the hospital library’s collection of print and electronic medical journals? Is there a difference between how and to what extent the print and electronic medical journals are used? What do the doctors think about the use of electronic journals? The theories used are about marketing, marketing research, library collections and how the collection can be developed to meet researchers need. Five clinics at a Swedish hospital were chosen for the study. A group questionnaire was handed out to the doctors at different kinds of meetings at the clinics, 52 of the 53 respondents answered. The result shows that most of the doctors use the print and electronic journals more seldom than once a month and mostly to read selected articles. The majority of the respondents mean it is important that the library supply a print and an electronic collection of medical journals and they are satisfied with the present collection. Their opinions about electronic journals vary but are mostly positive.Uppsatsnivå: