Some Problems of Collecting and Utilizing Foreign Journals in Polish Libraries

Polish academie libraries suffer from a significant lack of foreign scientifie journais. Funds assigned by the Ministry are insufficient. The central system of periodicals subscription also reveals many shortcomings. These problems should be solved through co-operation with the Centra I Academie Libraries. The Library of the Technical University of Wroclaw is one of the th ree Central Technical Libraries which undertake various actions in order to increase the level of serviees in the area of foreign scientific journais. Among others, a computer system, SPEC, has been elaborated to assist the subscription of foreign journals for the libraries of Poland. • 1. Some problems of collecting and utilizing foreign journals in Polish Iibraries There are approximately 5000 libraries and information centres of various types, excluding public libraries, in Poland which collect scientific literature and references. Among them 225 are ac adem ic Iibraries (according to the statisties from 1987). Most of these libraries are located in higher education institutions (92), institutes of the Polish Academy of Science (81), and industrialresearch institutes (29). Scientific journals provide scientists with information necessary for the steady enriehment of their knowledge and for carrying out creative research work. For this reason journals constitute a very significant, and also frequently used, portion of the collection of every academic Iibrary. Therefore, academie libraries try to acquire those journals which will best satisfy the needs of their patrons. The demand for journals and the policy for their acquisition varies from discipline to discipline. While discussing the problem for supplying Polish academic libraries with journais, account must be taken of the fact that journals are divided into Polish periodicals (approximately 2200 titles), periodicals published in the Eastern Bloc countries (6000 ti ties) and periodicals published in the Western countries (approximately 8500 titles). Such a division results mainly from economie conditions. Generally, academie libraries have sufficient money for Polish journals and for journals © International Association of Technological University Libraries 1990