Matching user needs in health care

This paper outlines the pattern of library services available to staff in the National Health Service (N.H.S.) and gives a preliminary report of a study of library usage and of attitudes towards libraries among clinical and pre‐clinical staff in the University of Oxford. Libraries serving N.H.S. staff are numerous but small, most commonly being staffed by a single librarian, and receive little publicity. In spite of their small size a significant number of N.H.S. libraries have a ‘special library’ character. Teaching hospital libraries represent the intersection between the university and the N.H.S. library systems and are the largest of the libraries serving N.H.S. staff. Data on usage and attitudes were collected by several different methods (questionnaires, interviews, observation, library statistics, feedback forms an analysis of ‘failures’ in finding documents) in the expectation that this would give a richer picture than would be provided by any one of the conventional survey techniques. The use of modelling methods for interpreting data is discussed.