Forwarded from Medlib-L.  How much difference would there be in a straw
pole of DGH libraries?

Tony

Tony McSeán
Director of Library Relations
Elsevier
+44 7795 960516
+44 1865 843630

-----Original Message-----
From: Medical Libraries Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bulger, James R
Sent: 21 March 2005 18:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Summary: for community hospitals: 10 "must-have" journals (long!)

Sorry this has taken so long to pull together, but here it is!

I received 8 replies to my query.  There's no science to this, but here are
the tabulated results, ranked by number of "votes" each journal title
received.  It seems to me the top 12 vote-getters (each having received 3 or
more votes) represent a pretty solid list.  You couldn't go wrong with
these.  However, you'd undoubtedly want to include nursing titles and
something from healthcare administration journals.  


8       JAMA
8       New England Journal
6       Annals of Internal Medicine
5       Obstetrics & Gynecology
5       Pediatrics
4       American Family Physician
4       Lancet
3       American Journal of Nursing (AJN)
3       Chest
3       Circulation
3       Critical Care Medicine
3       Postgraduate Medicine
2       Archives of Internal Medicine
2       Diabetes Care
2       Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (Am)
2       Journal of Family Practice
1       American Journal of Gastroenterology
1       American Journal of Surgery
1       Anesthesia  Analgesia
1       Anesthesiology
1       Annals of Emergency Medicine
1       BMJ
1       Clinical Orthopedics & Related Research
1       HealthLeaders (a "can't live without it" title)
1       Journal of National Cancer Institute
1       Journal of Ob Gyn Neo Nurs (JOGNN)
1       Journal of Trauma
1       Mayo Clinic Proceedings
1       MMWR
1       Modern Healthcare [or Hosp Health Networks - couldn't decide]
1       Nursing
1       Nursing Management
1       Physician & Sportsmedicine 

Thanks to all who responded!
For those who have to read everything, I've snipped & pasted actual replies
below.  

------------------
I'm not sure all of these come in e+print, but I think at least most of them
do [you're right!]:
        Annals of Internal medicine
        JAMA
        NEJM
        Lancet
        Pediatrics
        American Family Physician
        Journal of Family Pratice
        Postgraduate Medicine

I work in a small medical library - we subscribe to about 45 journals, but
these are most-often used titles.

------------------
The top ten (not in any certain order) most frequently perused journals
are:
 
NEJM
American Family Physician
JAMA
Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Anesthesia Analgesia
Critical Care Medicine
Chest
Diabetes Care
Obstetrics & Gynecology
Journal of Bone Joint Surgery American/British

------------------
A lot of the answer to this depends on WHAT you want the 10 journals for.
Are you looking for the 10 most clinically relevant, the 10 that might be on
the news the most, the 10 that primary care (i.e. family practitioners,
internists) would like to see, or are you used by pediatricians a lot also
and might want to add one of those to the mix.
Just decide the WHAT and be prepared to tell users who complain you don't
have THEIR favorite journal by describing your "journal collection
development process" and your "collection development policy".  That is
really what choosing this 10 is!

Assuming primary care and assuming that you want this primarily as a
browsing collection, I'd suggest: New England Journal of Medicine (if you
can give them an IP address of your terminals, full text is free for
5 IP addresses) Journal of the American Medical Association Annals of
Internal Medicine Archives of Internal Medicine Journal of Family Practice
Pediatrics Lancet BMJ (free after 6 months) Postgraduate Medicine American
Family Physician

Note that this doesn't include any of the more specialized
journals--American Heart Journal, Circulation, Obstetrics and
Gynecology--all of which are especially worthy.  You could substitute any of
these for Lancet and BMJ but those 2 are particularly interesting to
browsers since few primary care doctors would subscribe to them in their
office and they might particularly enjoy browsing them--kind of an added
value rather than possibly duplicating what they would get on their own.
Also, Journal of Family Practice, Postgraduate Medicine and American Family
Physician are VERY primary care focused.  They have a lot of review
articles, are focused on primary care, patient care, and are not "cutting
edge" or research oriented.  The first four along with Lancet and BMJ are
likely to "make the news".  Pediatrics comes with the AAP membership but it
also has a STRONG primary care focus and, along with Obstetrics &
Gynecology, often prints practice recommendations. I would personally say
that the first 4 are absolute musts.  The other 6 could be many different
journals depending on your focus.

Or, you could build your collection around some subset of the Brandon Hill
list or look at the top 20 clinically relevant journals in the recent study
by McKibbon and the folks from McMaster University in What do evidence-based
secondary journals tell us about the publication of clinically important
articles in primary healthcare journals? BMC Med. 2004 Sep 06;2(1):33. 
PMID: 15350200

------------------
Our Top 12 (in terms of usage) are: 

Pediatrics
New Engl. J. Med. 
Lancet
J. Trauma
J. Bone & Jt. Surg (Amer)
JAMA
Critical Care Med. 
Clin. Orthopedics & Related Res. 
Circulation
Chest
Arch. Int. Med. 
Annals Int. Med. 

------------------
New Engl J Med, JAMA, The Lancet, Am Fam Physician, Postgrad Med, Physician
and Sportsmedicine, Am J Nurs, Ann Intern Med, Obstet Gynecol, and
Circulation are 10 that come to mind right away.

------------------
New England Journal of Medicine
JAMA
MMWR
Annals of Internal Medicine
Pediatrics
Annals of Emergency Medicine
Chest
American Journal of Gastroenterology
Obstetrics & Gynecology
American Journal of Surgery

------------------
New England Journal of Medicine
JAMA
American Journal of Nursing
Nursing
Anesthesiology
Circulation
Critical care medicine
Diabetes care
Journal of obstetric, gynecologic, and neonatal nursing: JOGNN

------------------
New England J of Med
JAMA
Pediatrics
AJN
Obtetrics & Gynecology
Annals of Internal Medicine
Journal of the American College of Surgeons JNCI either Modern Healthcare or
Hospitals & Health Networks Nursing Management

...[snip] One subscription I couldn't live without is HealthLeaders.
$25.00/year, you get a daily headline alert with links to major newspaper
and media stories in health care that I spread around... I'd pay for this
one out of my own pocket for #11!
------------------

That's it!  If anyone has further questions or comments, please respond to
me directly, as my Medlib-l access is spotty these days (corporate
spam-catchers!).
--Jim

------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Bulger, MLIS
Library Services - 14001
Allina Hospitals & Clinics
800 East 28th Street                             voice (612) 863-5230
Minneapolis, MN  55407-3799                   fax (612) 863-5695
[log in to unmask]
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