Galina A. Kovalchuk,

Head of St.-Petersburg State Pavlov Medical University Library

The Medical Library of St. Petersburg State Pavlov Medical University was founded in 1897 at the same time that the Women’s Medical Institute was founded. The first pieces in the collection were numerous gifts from famous Russian medical scientists L. Zmeyev, M. Mudrow, J. Chudnovsky, N. Bakst, N. Maximovich-Ambodic and others. Some of those editions are real "pearls" of rarity: «Avicennai liber canonis … » by Avicenna (1555), «Anatomia» by A.Vesalii (1604), «Nosographiaphysiologica … » by M. Mudrow (1826.), etc. Our library holds almost 4000 rare editions, which are mostly books in Russian and foreign languages published before 1850.

The Library collects books on the following topics: scientific and educational medical editions, applied literature, and literature on humanitarian sciences. Nowadays our library collection consists of 967,000 print items, including 283,000 scientific and 391,000 educational literature sources (275,536 or 28% of them published at our University). Different fiction books comprise 115,304 volumes. Volumes in foreign languages number 172,000. Each year the Library receives up to 1,671 book titles (21,000 total copies, including 1,921 as gifts), 172 Russian language periodicals and 29 foreign language periodicals.

The main goal of our library is to provide efficient and qualified information resources for the practical, scientific and educational activities of the University. We use both traditional and modern ways of customer service to fulfill this task.

In 1993 the Library started an electronic catalogue which nowadays includes 60,000 records (1,600 of them are retrospective). 2,417 users requested a total of 171,372 titles using the electronic system vs. 215,244 visitors who requested 673,597 printed books in person.

Some library procedures (gathering, classification, indexing and searching) are computerized. We use integrated library software "DIT IBIS" created by the Russian National Medical Library on the basis of the MESH catalogue. Since 1995 Library resources are available via the University local area network, and since 1997 it is possible to search them via the Internet.

Setting a goal to constantly improve our work, we believe that it is necessary to computerize all library services including customer service and to create our own library software products (like electronic catalogue of dissertations, periodicals, annotated database of rare editions) that could be available on CD-ROM or by electronic interlibrary loan (ILL).

We pay great attention to teaching library users how to work with the new technologies. The Library organizes courses for students, post-graduates, and University staff on the methods of searching for necessary information in CD-ROM and on-line databases. In cooperation with the Department of Computer Sciences we developed software called "Automatic Search of Medical and Scientific Information." This software was developed for training Internet consultants in the departments of the University. This program will be available on our Internet site. We have also started placing an electronic catalogue of our library on the Internet.

Our library takes an active part in different projects. In May 1999, as a result of joint efforts between Open Society Institute (OSI) and the University, the ‘’Internet for Medicine’’ class was opened. This class is aimed at the personnel of the University and at medical workers in the St.-Petersburg area who independently search for medical information in local and foreign electronic databases on the Internet. Since the 1st of January 2000, in cooperation with OSI, we have had the opportunity to take part in a unique project called EIFLDirect (Electronic Information for Libraries). EIFLDirect allows us to have access to EBSCO on-line databases including MEDLINE and to 80 full-text medical and scientific journals in electronic form (full texts are available from 1990). We also receive this information on CD-ROMs.

We also take part in the "Electronic Library for Russian Scientists" project which gives us free on-line access to the Elsevier publishing house database. The Bell and Howell company was very kind to give us free access to the "ProQuest Direct" medical database. We also use the "Cardiosource" database supported by the American College of Cardiology. It includes the most important English-language cardiology journals.

We obtained interesting experience working on the OSI project "Electronic Documents Exchange." Our participation in this project made it possible to observe the benefits of electronic ILL which to a great extent facilitates obtaining foreign periodical articles from the joint collection of five big city libraries using the ARIEL system (via Internet).

Our work experience demonstrates the importance of cooperation among libraries for the purpose of satisfying the demands of our readers.