The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7246 p596
26 April 2003

Society summary

Society launches online library catalogue

To help meet the information needs of its members, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has launched an easily searchable online catalogue of publications in its library as the first stage in a programme to deliver more library and information services over the internet.

The online catalogue contains details of more than 15,000 titles added to the library since 1991, plus selected titles published earlier. For many items the catalogue offers a link to the full text at a relevant website.

The online catalogue is available at olib.rpsgb.org.uk or through the information centre section of the Society's website. It includes a search facility designed to make it easy to track down items of interest. Searches can be made by author and/or title or by free text, and can be limited by date of publication (before/after a specified year) or by type of publication (eg, book, legislation, pharmacopoeia, Statutory Instrument, thesis).

The title/author search page accepts partial titles, provided the exact start of the title is included. It also accepts incomplete authors' names. If unsure of the exact author or title, the searcher can use the free text search option, which accepts individual keywords from the title, subtitle, series, names and subject fields. Boolean logic searching and phrase searching can be used.

Once a publication has been found, the website offers a page of information that includes title, subtitle, author(s), publisher, year of publication, number of pages, location within the library and, if available, a link to the full text on the relevant website.

The page also lists every copy of the title held by the library, with an indication of its availability. For example, the page for the Department of Health's pharmacy plan, "Pharmacy in the future: implementing the NHS plan", indicates that the library has four copies, of which one is available only for reference and three are available for loan. The page currently shows that one of these three is out on loan, due back by 20 May.

The Society's librarian, Roddy Morrison, said: "The new service allows 24-hour access to the library catalogue, which is the key to making this unique collection of pharmacy related information available to pharmacists. This is the first stage in a programme to deliver more library and information services over the internet. Future developments to the library catalogue will allow users to look up their library account, to reserve and renew loans, and to make requests for stock and non-stock items."

The library points out that if a book published before 1991 cannot be found through the online catalogue it may still be in the collection. A check can be made by telephone (020 7572 2300), fax (020 7572 2499) or e-mail (library@rpsgb.org.uk).