한국 의학도서관 네트워크 구축에 관한 연구

The importance of medical information is well recognized not only in the areas of medical education and research but also for the medical diagnosis and patients treatment. Since the medical professionals are responsible for human life, rapid and precise transfer of up-to-date information is requested in the medical fields than in any professional areas. A huge amount of papers produce new investigation and knowledge every year in various biomedical journals. The major functions of medical libraries are considered to collect such journals and other related medical literature, and to transfer them to the medical professionals.

It is literally impossible for a single library to have the whole collection of information to meet every requests. And there are definite needs of cooperative system for the efficient resource sharing with other medical libraries. However, a reliable and cooperative medical library network has not yet been in Korea although the needs are well recognized.

A hierarchical medical library network was established, in the present paper, to elaborate and promote the functional activities and efficiencies of each medical library with limited medical information resources. To establish the network, the current status of medical libraries over the country was analyzed, and Medical libraries were divided into eight regional groups. The hierarchical structure of medical library network is consisting of Korea national medical information center, regional center libraries and local medical libraries.