[Information provision for the biomedical sciences in the Netherlands faces an uncertain future]

Abstract

The availability of biomedical information in the Netherlands is largely guaranteed by the libraries of the eight medical faculties and related university hospitals together with the Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services (Dutch acronym: NIWI). The acquisition of biomedical journals has always been coordinated at a national level. Up until now the NIWI has played a central role in filling in the gaps left by the other collections. It also functions as a national archive and a main document delivery centre. The NIWI receives financial support from the Dutch government to perform these tasks. Recently, NIWI announced that it intends to terminate its acquisition and document delivery service for the biomedical sciences. The remaining eight libraries foresee a number of negative effects if no alternatives to the present NIWI service are developed. We are of the opinion that this situation necessitates a national, biomedical information strategy.