Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) was first published in 1960 by the National Library of Medicine in the USA is a medical terminology thesaurus which has been revised and published every year since 1963 as the Part II issue of the January edition of Index Medicus. Terms used in this MeSH are controlled vocabularies; descriptors, and are also used for (1) making the index for Index Medicus, (2) searching MEDLARS file and (3) cataloging books, serials and audiovisual materials. The author describes a fourth purpose, other than these primary uses, for MeSH terms, namely, obtaining fundamental medical knowledge by librarians. In the previous article, the effectiveness of systematic study of MeSH terms was described, and concrete examples were given using the MeSH terms of digestive system. This time the author studied MeSH as a thesaurus taking up some terms as examples from MeSH terms of the heart, according to such publication as “Technical Notes.”

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In this paper, the authors analyzed the statistics on the use of foreign journals at the Medical Library, University of Tokyo from April 1979 to March 1980. The journals borrowed at least once comprised 966 titles, or one-third of all the foreign titles in this library. Ten of these titles, about 1% accounted for 20% of the overall use. And 25% of the journals borrowed were published during the year under review.

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An Igaku Toshokan readers inquiry was made in January 1983. From the Japan Medical Library Association (JMLA) 300 librarians were picked and 100 other non-JMLA subscribers including hospitals, companies, etc., were also sampled. Of the 400 samples, 301 (75.3%) responded. The study items are: 1) Does the reader read every issue of Igaku Toshokan? 2) Why does he/she read it? Or why not? 3) Is the subscription rate reasonable? 4) Best articles published in 1981 and 1982. 5) Columns most read 6) What article themes does he/she want to read? 7) What types of articles does he/she want to read? 8) Comments. The findings are: Articles on library mechanization, job analysis, secondary materials and online searching are most appreciated; articles on case reports, and on lectures are welcomed; book reviews and Q & A are eagerly read. It seems that readers want to read not only library and information sciences articles but also broad popular writings on medical basics.

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Personnel and audiovisual materials in software, which supports hardware, are important in addition to hardware in establishing both a LRC (Learning Resource Center) and a small-scale audiovisual room in a library. When services of providing audiovisual materials in a library are considered, much importance tends to be attached to the apparatuses and equipment. However, prior to this, gathering and organization of materials should be sufficiently investigated. It is a problem that many purchased materials are not arranged to be used effectively, to say nothing of apparatuses without materials to use. Materials should be arranged from the standpoint of actual users. The best use of the characteristics of the audiovisual materials as teaching materials cannot be made if they are arranged and piled by an expedient means for the library's purposes in view of the fact that audiovisual materials are difficult to deal with. From the above-mentioned points, the systems of classification, cataloging and search should be determined taking into considerable account the way users will utilize these materials. The establishment of the method of organizing audiovisual materials will allow audiovisual materials to stay in the library and, consequently, will make the role of medical libraries in medical education more important. This paper describes methods of organizing slides, one of the most difficult audiovisual materials to handle, dividing them into 1. registration, 2. classification, 3. cataloging, 4. labeling, 5. storage containers and 6. usage on the basis of the actual conditions of member libraries of The Japan Medical Library Association. This study was supported by a fiscal 1981 subsidy from The Japan Medical Library Association.

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Among the Journal Citation Reports data of 1980, the number of citing items, the number of cited items, the number of self-citing items, the impact factor, the decay index, the immediacy index, and the number of papers are compared in the 47 subject fields of biological sciences and medicine. The results are: 1. The number of cited items of a journal corresponds to the number of citing items. 2. The values of the number of cited items divided by the number of citing items are relatively constant. On the other hand, the values of the impact factor fluctuate among the subject fields. 3. The values of the decay index are relatively constant, while those of the immediacy index fluctuate among the subject fields.

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