MDs Cannot Keep Up With New Literature |
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MDs Cannot
Keep Up With
New Literature
BIRMINGHAM, AI.A.—The "explosion" of
scientific literature has made it virtually
impossible for physicians to keep track
of what is being printed in their fields,
the director of the National Library of
Medicine said here.
Dr. Martin M. Cummings, speaking
at the dedication of the Lister Hill Li-brary
of the Health Sciences of the Uni-versity
of Alabama, said scientific litera-ture
has doubled in volume every 15
years "since publication of the first
scientific journal 200 years ago."
. Today there are approximately 50,000
scientific journals containing more than
2 million articles published annually, he
said.
"Each day brings forth the birth of
three new scientific journals, while only
one dies during this period. The pub-lication
explosion is two and one-half
times greater than the population ex-plosion.
"The number of books and mono-graphs
published is said to double every
five years," Dr. Cummings said. "Not
only does this pose serious problems for
libraries which must acquire, catalog and
store them, it also presents the reader
with an impossible task.
"A report by the Committee on
Scientific and Technical Communication
of the National Academy of Sciences
points out that in the field of science
alone a man reading 200 to 300 words
a minute would take 50 years to read
a single year's output even if he spent
24 hours a day, 7 days a week reading."
Dr. Cummings said the answer to this
plethora of information is "selection"
through book catalogs and reviews, in-dexes
and a "good librarian."
U.S. Medicine, Nov. 1 , 1971
Page 8.
Object Description
| Title | MDs Cannot Keep Up With New Literature |
| Subject |
Cummings, Martin Marc National Library of Medicine Publications, Scientific Physicians Continuing Education |
| Date | 1971-11-01 |
| Identifier | See reference URL on the navigation bar. |
| Source | Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport Medical Library (http://lib.sh.lsuhsc.edu) |
| Language | en |
| Relation | http://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/cdm4/index_LSUHSCS_NPC.php?CISOROOT=/LSUHSCS_NPC |
| Coverage-Spatial | Shreveport (Caddo, La.) |
| Rights | Physical rights are retained by Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport. Copyright is retained in accordance with U.S. copyright laws. |
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