Time to Give Up the Brandon Hill List and Move to Doody’s Core Titles?

A long time ago in galaxy (not so) far, far away, there was a list that would identify essential texts for medical libraries.  This list was called the Brandon-Hill list and it was a very fine list used by many medical librarians through out the land.  But in 2003 there was a disturbance in the force, the list would not go on, it ceased to exist.  However, Doody’s Core Titles emerged, filling the void of Brandon-Hill. 

James Shedlock wrote an interesting article, “Coping without Brando-Hill is Easy; Replace it with Doody’s Core Titles” describing briefly the history and creation of Doody’s Core Titles (DCT) and the reasons why librarians really should stop looking at the old and super out of date Brandon-Hill list and begin to use products like DCT to assist them with their purchasing. 

Now I realize this article is in Doody’s and is written by somebody on the board and is blogged about by a board member (me) as well. So to give you some other perspectives about Doody’s I am also including links to several reviews on DCT so librarians can make an informed decision.  Because, clinging to the old Brandon-Hill list is not an option. As James mentioned, “Though the old Brandon-Hill list was free, it was dated and now no longer exists; it is gone and is not coming back.”  It is time to move on.

Doody’s Core Titles in the Health Sciences (DCT)
Karen S. Fischer
J Med Libr Assoc. 2005 July; 93(3): 409.

 
Review of Doody’s Core Titles in the Health Sciences 2004 (DCT 2004)
Mark A Spasser
Biomedical Digital Libraries 2005, 2:5 (29 June 2005)
 
Anybody know of any newer reviews please leave the citation in the comments and I will add them to the post.
 

2 thoughts on “Time to Give Up the Brandon Hill List and Move to Doody’s Core Titles?”

  1. Sometimes I find that Doody’s is often just too academic or esoteric for my small medical library – even the core collection. Majors and Rittenhouse still update the Brandon-Hill Collection. One feature I really like that Doody offers is that it aggregates all e-book vendors for a book title. So handy!

    Majors still has permission to continue updating the list and still does so. You can recieve an updated Brandon-Hill list from them by e-mail. Majors can be searched by BH. Rittenhouse also updates Brandon-Hill and has Doody’s rating and reviews. Rittenhouse is doing some interesting collection development things with Doody’s Core List. Just went on today and was very impressed. It lists whatt you have bought from them – and marks it off from the list. Not sure if you have to have Doody or not though. But still a great idea.

  2. The Medical Library Association recently published The Medical Library Association’s Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences / Laurie L. Thompson, editor-in-chief ; Mori Lou Higa, Esther Carrigan, Rajia Tobia, associate editors. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2011.

    I use both Doody’s and the Brandon-Hill updates from Rittenhouse or Majors, etc. When Doody’s achieves the quality of Brandon-Hill, then people will stop using Brandon-Hill. Some parts of Doody’s are not as strong as others. The MLA Guide by Laurie Thompson helps to fill the gap left by Brandon-Hill as Doody’s continues to evolve.

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