Health Sciences libraries in Spain. A first description

Abstract

Libraries are of fundamental importance in health care, training and research due to continuing advances in knowledge and its diffusion in a wide variety of publications. Spain lacks an organized library system and deficiencies are perceived. This article presents a descriptive study of the health sciences libraries in Spain. We performed a cross sectional study by survey of the following public centers: hospitals with more than 100 beds or smaller hospitals with teaching accreditation: centers of health management and administration; research centers: schools of public health; schools of medicine and dentistry; and schools of nursing and physical therapy. A self-administered questionnaire was mailed to centers with libraries, and follow-up was made by telephone. 400 of the 716 centers identified have their own libraries (55.9%). and 82 have shared libraries (11.5%). Over half of the libraries (52.8%) are in hospitals. AII research centers, schools of medicine and dentistry, schools of public health and hospital complexes have their own or shared libraries, as do 42.6% of administrative centers, 84.6% of schools of nursing and physical therapy, 79% of all hospitals, 72.4% of individual hospitals, 92.5% of teaching hospitals, and 50.5% of non-teaching hospitals. Only two-thirds of the centers have access to a library. The proportion of hospitals with library access can be considered low, especially in non-teaching hospitals, those with a small number of beds, or those not belonging to a hospital complex. Over half of the libraries are in hospitals, thus they will be of primary importance in designing future documentation systems.