Information acquisition by users of hospital libraries: a comparison of Brazil and the UK

The acquisition of relevant, up-to-date information is clearly of prime impor tance to medical staff. Though there have been numerous medical informa tion user studies, only a few have involved the observation of medical personnel as they are actually in the process of acquiring information. A form of participant-observation is employed here to examine the problems of medical staff acquiring information from formal sources located in hospital libraries. A teaching hospital library and two non-teaching hospital libraries have been studied in the UK along with three comparable hospital libraries in Brazil.

The results indicate that information requirements and library use in the two countries are distinctly similar, but the process of acquisition is affect ed by the differing information environment. Medical staff adapt to the ambient information environment as best they can. In fact, respondents in Brazil express only two major reservations — regarding the currency of information and the language of delivery — which do not appear in UK responses. Though transfer of innovatory practices from the UK to Brazil is therefore feasible (and desirable) in human terms, it is necessarily limited by the resources available.