Academic health sciences librarians' use of the Brandon-Hill selected list in book selection activities: results of a preliminary descriptive study.

The first Brandon-Hill list was published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (BMLA) in 1965. Since then, the "Selected List of Books and Journals for the Small Medical Library" has become a widely used collection development tool for health sciences librarians. Although intended as a selection guide for small or medium-size libraries in hospitals or comparable medical facilities, and compiled with hospital librarians in mind, Brandon and Hill have noted that "previous versions of the list have been used extensively by other health sciences librarians, academic librarians, public librarians, physicians, and teaching programs" [1]. Brandon and Hill indicate in the preface to the 1995 list their belief that cooperative resource-sharing is fast becoming the primary application for the list [2]. Since 1994, the list has been cited specifically by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in the Accreditation Manual for Hospitals as an example of an authoritative resource for identifying "up-to-date scientific, clinical, and managerial knowledge" [3-4]. This was the first time that the Brandon-Hill list and "A Library for Internists: Recommendations from the American College of Physicians" [5] have been mentioned by name as examples of authoritative publications for such use by the JCAHO, although the lists have been used for many years by librarians as collection development guides [6]. The literature contains only a very few references to specific core lists, authority lists, or selected book lists used as collection development tools. These references are found most frequently in articles related to journal acquisition in hospital libraries or book collection development activities in undergraduate college libraries [7-9]. Other published materials related to the subject consist primarily of lists of selected books for reference use in hospital libraries or for use in specific disciplines [10-12]. The Brandon-Hill book list has been used by librarians beyond the intended audience, and the literature related to the use of book lists as collection development tools contains no descriptive review that explicitly examines core list use in book selection activities overall by any specific group of health sciences librarians. Actual use of the Brandon-Hill book list was addressed briefly in an analysis of replies to the survey question "How do you update your reference collection?" Sixteen percent (twenty-nine) of the respondents indicated that they used the Brandon-Hill list to update their reference collection [13]. The preliminary study reported in this article was undertaken to examine the extent of use of the book portion of the Brandon-Hill list in general collection development practice by academic health sciences librarians in the United States and Canada.