Academic health sciences libraries, then and now

We have made no attempt to compare academic health science libraries along other criteria. Collections and services are not always congruent with budgets; nor do we imply that bigger is better. It is much more expensive to operate a library today than in 1962. In addition, building backfiles is not usually required for a library that has been collecting, even modestly, for fifty to one hundred years. In summary, the eastern seaboard health science libraries generally declined in rank, whereas those in the midwest, southwest, and west either remained in rank order or increased in rank. Exceptions are in North and South Carolina. Although this socioeconomic shift is interesting, the more relevant finding is the narrowing range. In 1962 the median health science library budget was one-sixth as large as that of top-ranked UC-SF. Whereas UC-SF's budget has shown a six-fold increase over twenty years, the median library's budget has shown a twelve-fold increase. The gap between the annual budgets of the top-ranked schools and those in the bottom half of the range remains substantial but is apparently closing. It is anticipated that during the next two decades relatively few dollars will separate the annual budgets of the top ten or twenty academic health science libraries from those at the other end of the spectrum.