Medical Library Institution Building. Papers and Reports No. 15.

The viability of organizational change depends on the gradual institutionalization of innovations. There has been a history of planned social change in medical library organization. Stress was being felt in that library agencies could not meet user expectations. With the Medical Library Assistance Act, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) was authorized to act as a change agent to forge new organizational relationships for medical document delivery. Regional medical libraries (RML) were to be founded and rationalized into a hierarchical system of resources under NLM's guidance. The Kentucky-Ohio-Michigan Regional Medical Library was the first decentralized RML, its purpose being the establishment of new linkages between existing biomedical libraries for the sharing of resources. Types of linkages vary throughout the three-state region, but the data suggests that new communication channels have been established, and that the RML is supportive of change. (Author/SL)