ROY ALLCORN, head of information, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, replies:

In 2002, following a review of information services, the Society acknowledged that there was an increasing need to allow members to access information by electronic means as well as by visiting the London and Edinburgh libraries. The Council agreed a strategy to provide members with access to electronic and print material (a “hybrid” library), which is being implemented in a number of ways. The library’s online catalogue was launched in 2003 and as well as offering a facility for borrowing material it also provides direct links to original electronic source documents on the web. Currently, about 10 per cent of the 21,000 items on the catalogue can be accessed in this way and at present over 35 per cent of new items being added to it have live links to web-based original documents.

Later in 2006, we are planning to provide scanned electronic copies (in the form of PDFs) of journal articles held by the library: this will complement the traditional photocopy service.

We are planning to undertake a new survey of members’ electronic information needs to give us an opportunity of identifying resources needed in the longer term. We encourage direct suggestions of specific resources of interest at any time.