The Photoduplication- Service the Army Medical Library1 COLONEL HAROLD W. JONES Army Medical Library, Washington, D. C .
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P TO 1940, the Army Medical Library, whose collecbon . had been in existence for more than 100 years and which then amounted to a million or more items with 400,000 bound volumes, had been used principally for the assembling for publication of its indexed material in the famous Indm-Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Ofice. This publication, now in its 64th year, was begun by John Shaw Billings and is now in its fourth alphabetical series, having been issued uninterruptedly except for the depression years of 1933-35. The Army Medical Library did operate a library loan system which was fairly large (13,000 or more loans annually), which i t made no particular effort to increase. Institutions had been borrowing books from the Library for more than half a century. It was recognized that there were some losses, the books were often returned in a damaged condition, and sometimes after half a dozen trips required rebinding. Many were kept overtime, which involved correspondence, and if a bound serial was out on loan no article in the volume could be examined until it was returned. It was plain to see that a limitation on service a t a distance existed. Moreover, unbound serials could not be loaned, and patrons living far away could not see them a t all. True, there was the photostat, but people seldom wish to pay 15 cents a page for them, and free photostats were out of the question. In 1940, due to a desire to serve individual research workers by giving prompt access to the recent literature, the Library first began to publish a list of recent medical and scientific papers as they appeared. This was the mere listing of the contents of certain selected journals week by week. The number of titles averaged something over a thousand. In connection with this effort, a microfilm camera was installed and service was furnished a t cost by an organization known as the "Friends of the Annv Medical Librarv." .. . . - . . . . -. . . - . . . .
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The conception that library loan service should extend to the furnishmg, free, of a photographic copy of any journal article called for, is no doubt a novel one. The arguments in its favor are: that thereby the Library can extend its field to patrons without any limitation of time or space; that the wear and tear on the heavy bound book of serials is eliminated; that any number of persons can use the same book at the same time; that the loss of valuable material in the mails is done away with, and so on. Among the reasons advanced against such a free service are that it is or will be abused, particularly by commercial firms who will contrive to get all sorts of copying done gratis, for which they themselves will make a charge to others; that it is expensive; that it encourages a spirit of "get something for nothing even if you don't want it"; that it establishes a dangerous precedent; and that people don't appreciate what they don't pay for. However, in'more than one year of operation on a free basis, no request which showed evidence of abuse of the privilege has been received. Certainly the integrity of those engaged in research should not be doubted, and the contributions of pharmaceutical firms to medicine may be as important as those rendered by individuals. There are those who hold up their hands and ask what you are going to do when people send you money. You must, they aver, have an accounting system, for whoever heard of a complicated picture business that didn't keep books? Now we know that when we have an administrative setup for a photoduplication unit and are in trade, so to speak, that a big share of the proceeds will go to pay for that setup. In the case of small services that cost perhaps 25 to 50 cents, it would really be cheaper to give this away than to collect, account, and dispose of the small sums of money. Charxes made by wel1:known libraries for a sinxle
good part of it goes into accounting administration, perhaps 80 cents out of every dollar received. However, administration is a means to an end and not an end in itself, and if it is more costly in the long run to maintain the service on a paying basis, then i t has no excuse for being. There is of course, no argument whatever for maintaining a free service that seeks to duplicate entire books or collections in other libraries. Our free service seeks simply to give the research worker a t a distance the same rights as we accord those who live in Washington. He is often the little fellow in research, and is not by . any - means always the head of a big laboratory. The Army Medical Library, of which I am the director, became convinced, even before the war, that its service should be expanded to justify its recognition as a really great national medical library and that it should do everything possible to open its collection to all those who wished to make use of it. To this end, some of its friends founded an association known as the "Friends of the Army Medical Library," which was permitted, through its Executive Committee, to found "Medico-film Service" which operated and carried on photoduplication in the building on a nonprofit basis and who published and circulated the "Current List of Medical Literature" using the Library's current index cards for the purpose. The Medico-6lm Service (so called because, as I have said, it was a privately sponsored venture) began with one camera, the original Draeger Camera, which is still in use. It had the use of one small room. In order to extend the use of its collection still further, Medico-film Service has. been replaced now by the Photoduplication Service conducted as a regular government service to the Armed Forces and embracing individual patrons of the Library who now cannot well be separated from the official users. Films are gradually takmg the place of loans, especially loans of bound and unbound serials. The expanded Photoduplication Service has become one of the Library's principal activities and it operates six cameras, gives 48- to 72-hour service on reference work, and employs eight persons. It occupies about 2000 square feet of space and its experience has dictated the setting aside of some 4000 square feet of space in the floor plans of the new Army Medical Library which will occupy a place on Capitol Hill after the war. This is in anticipation of a great increase in photoduplication work in future years. While the Army Medical Library attempts complete coverage of medical literature from the year 1467 when the first medical treatises appeared, its film work has three purposes: send in^ material of a medical character to members of the ~ r m e dServices in the war theatres, furnishing medical material to our Allies to replace that destroyed by enemy action, and giving aid to those engaged in scientific research. For the last purpose, we try to cover the fields of biochemistry, pathology, parasitology, etc., by securing the appropriate journals in every country which publishes them. In the case of some countries, both friendly and enemy, we are
oftentimes the only institution now able to secure journals in certain fields. Obviously with but one copy of a scientific journal in the country we cannot loan the original, but we can provide as many film copieaas are needed. Bulk copying, copying of entire recent works where infringement of the copyright law must of course occur, and copying of old books complete, is not done as a free service. The only instance where we have copied textbooks on a large scale has been for Free China, to which freight 'shipments could not be made and whose literature has been destroyed. For the Chungking Government we copy complete rnns of about 100 journals as a continuing process, and we have reproduced more than 100 modern textbooks for current use. This work will continue only until such time as originals can be obtained. These films (negatives) are reproduced 15 times, for that is the number of University Centers we serve. Complete copies of some of our incunabula have been made for certain public libraries in the United States, but such service now is very limited. Smce a film is a substitute for a loan we can say that our loan service outside of Washington has increased from an average of 9000 per year, over a period of several years, to nearly 40,000 for the last 12 months. This means that our collection is not merely a static one devoted solely to the production of the Index Cutul o p e but is decidedly active and useful to a far greater number than was the case in former years. As I have said, such free service is experimental and thus far no other library seems eager to adopt it as far as I am aware. If we are compelled, on the ground of unjustifiable expense of the free service, to set up a department which shall collect a myriad of small sums, depositing them in the Treasury, and to be subjected to inspections and audits without number, I doubt if the service will be any better, and I know that scientists will not be as inclined to use it. In the end, by making necessary the employment of highly paid accountants, i t will very likely prove more expensive for the Government. As has been said, i t is an experiment, justified by the war, and time will tell if it is the proper solution for the problem of bringing medical literature to the scientists by way of the mail carrier and the front door. It is difficult to forecast with any degree of certainty the amount of photoduplication that will be necessary after the war. Will there be demanded library service, such as a national medical research library like our own is now furnishing, as a matter of right? Will international service be rendered on a large scale a t low cost? It should be borne in mind that the " meatest cost is the equipment and the necessary overhead for complete service, irrespective of volume. After this, additional service can be given at a slight increase in cost. Science and scientiiic research cannot well be restricted to the narrow boundaries of nationalism, and our plans for the future, nebulous as they may be, have inclined us toward a generous view of the need of international service.
