Journal usage in NHS hospitals: a comparison report of total usage at an acute NHS Trust and a specialist NHS Trust in the North West of England.

Background: Health care libraries spend a large amount of their non-pay budgets on the purchase of scientific, technical and medical journals. In a typical hospital library in the National Health Service (NHS) North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA), this can represent between 80 and 90% of the collection development budget.

Methods And Results: Data were collected from 1 December 2005 to 30 November 2006 using COUNTER-generated usage statistics obtained from publishers' administration tools.