By Wong Kah Wei 

 

One of the most important goals of a university library is to provide access to its collections of books, periodicals, research papers, dissertations and other materials to support teaching, learning and research. Today, databases such as Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, Proquest and so on allow students and researchers to deep dive to find online the full-text of journal articles, conference papers, book chapters and so on. Library search engines such as NUSearch+ makes searching our library’s collections, right down to the article or book chapter level across databases seamlessly.   

So, how did students and researchers in the past access research periodicals without search engines? How do students and researchers find these highly relevant periodicals when they do their assignments and research? Looking into our collection of publications compiled by our university library through the years, I found publications which tell the story of how librarians of the past created ways to access research periodicals.  

The earliest publication produced by the university library to facilitate research was a List of periodicals in the library as on 31st December, 1939 : with a guide to the use of the section for periodicals. This publication lists all the journals and serials in the library of the King Edward VII College of Medicine as of 31 December 1939.  

The publication was not the journal catalogue of the library. It was a reference guide to the journal catalogue which was kept on the library’s catalogue rack. As a reference guide, the publication has instructions on how to locate journal entries in the journal catalogue, arrangement of journals on the shelves and how to use indexes to medical literature and so on. The purpose the publication was to orientate and guide students and researchers to navigate their way in finding the journals. It acted more as a guide than a catalogue. The element of instruction was added to the listing of periodicals, enhancing the value of the publication.

The next revised edition of the list of periodicals was in the 1947 edition, which had no information on how to locate journals. Instead, the Classification number of each journal was listed. Presumably, using the Classification numbers better facilitated the location of the journals as the journals were arranged by Classification numbers on the shelves. One step was, thus, eliminated but the list of periodicals was used merely as a list and no longer as a guide. 

The compilation and publication of lists of journals continued, 10 years later with the 1957 edition of Check List of Current Serials of University of Malaya Library. By then, the term “serials” was used instead of “periodicals”. It was in the later Checklist of Current Periodicals in the Medical Library dated 1974 which gave the definition of a serial as “a publication which is issued in successive parts…intended to be continued indefinitely. Serials include periodicals, annual reports, year-books, transactions, proceedings and memoirs of societies”.

In addition to providing an alphabetical listing of the serial titles categorised by subjects, the 1957 edition also listed the prices of each serial title which were mostly in pounds sterling. The purpose of the Check List took on the additional aim of showing the cost required to maintain the serials collection each year.

By 1962, the university was renamed University of Singapore. The 1962 edition of Check List of Current Serials, April 1962 was published by the University of Singapore library, as “a quick guide to the Library’s serials holdings”. The subscription price of each serial title was still given in the hope that “subscription costs will prove useful”. Subscription prices of each serial title continued to be given until 1971.  

The 1962 list of serial titles is categorised by Main Library, Alphabetical Index of serial titles and Medical Library. This was because in 1962, the Main Library and Medical Library were located in different places. The Main Library was at the Bukit Timah campus while the Medical Library was still at Sepoy Lines.  

The 1967 edition of Check list of Current Serials in the University of Singapore Library, 1967 boldly stated that the library had “one of the best of collections of serials for undergraduate study and research purposes in Singapore and Malaysia”. By 1967, the list of serials included the serial collection of three libraries – the Main Library, Medical Library and the Law Library.  

The Medical Library was known then as the Medical Library of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Malaya (University of Malaya, 1960). The Medical Library also compiled their own “Catalogue of the periodical publications in the library” in 1953 and 1955. These were alphabetical lists of serial titles. Instead of the Classification number shelf arrangement used in the Main Library, the serials on the Medical Library shelves were arranged alphabetically by serial title (University of Singapore Medical Library, 1965). Historically, this was a practice recommended for all medical libraries to help doctors and researchers access the serials quickly and easily. Medical researchers usually gain access to journal literature through indexes and abstracts and therefore, it would be more advantageous to arrange the journal volumes by title (Handbook of Medical Library Practice, 1982).  

The 1974 compilation of Medical Library’s serials mentioned a Visiblex (visible index) which researchers should refer to in order to find up-to-date information on the latest issue received, subscription prices and the last volume bound. This is made possible by the way this unique index efficiently organises and manages the information. 

In 1979, Medical Library compiled, A Classified List of Periodical Subscriptions in the Medical Library which was intended solely to “enable the user to know what periodicals are available in a particular area, how much they cost and to what extent their prices have risen since 1974”. A comparison of the 1974 and 1979 subscription prices showed that most serial titles experienced significant price increases; for instance, the journal Nature saw its price rise by an astonishing 136%. But why this need to inform students and researchers about the price increases? According to the library’s internal reports, price lists of serials were distributed to lecturers to rate the importance of the serials collection according to how well it supported curriculum and research programmes. This was just one way to monitor the relevance of the collection and for budget control (University of Singapore, 1975). 

The list of serials of the university library continued to be compiled and published until 1990 when it was titled Checklist of Current Periodicals. In 1997, the serials collection of NUS Libraries was made accessible online via LINC (LIbrary INtegrated Catalogue), the library’s online public access catalogue. LINC provided filters to retrieve serial titles for browsing. There was no longer the need to compile lists or update Visiblex records. 

Today, using a search engine to access the vast range of materials such as books, journals, research papers, maps in any collection is a given. But when technology was not yet available, publications such as these check lists of serials, catalogues and indexes reveal the many different efforts and creative ways, librarians of the past took to guide students and researchers to the resources they need. These librarians had only want one goal in mind – to make their rich collections of resources discoverable and used for learning and research. This goal remains the same even to this day.  

 

References 

Darling, L. (Ed.). (1982). Handbook of medical library practice (4th ed.). Medical Library Association. 

University of Malaya Library (1960). Your library: a guide to the Library of the University of Malaya in Singapore.