WHY CAN’T THEY JUST
DISAPPEAR?
Elizabeth A. Amin, MD
I
am having a great deal of difficulty getting
rid of old professional journals. I don’t
mean this in the sense that no one wants
them (which is a fact) but that I am finding
it physically impossible to assign them to the
recycling bin. Over the last few years I have
gone through the piles repeatedly and may
have gotten rid of an old Time magazine or
SBI (Society of Breast Imaging) newsletter that was lurking amongst
honest to goodness peer reviewed scholarly journals. Once in a while
I reread occasional articles, becoming more and more aware that
the information which used to be cutting edge and which I knew
pretty well by heart is now out of date. These journals may have
historical significance. Certainly no one today would make clinical
decisions based on the information they contain. Nevertheless they
go back on the shelves, perhaps in a different arrangement from
before. They seem incapable of recognizing their own irrelevance.
Many years ago I gave away dozens of beautifully (and expensively) bound sets of “Radiology,” the journal of the Radiological
Society of North America. The recipient was a female resident at the
University of Louisville, whom I had met by chance at an evening
lecture. She had told me that she was looking for any back copies of
either “Radiology” or the “American Journal of Roentgenology” and
she was delighted to find that I had a treasure trove (at least the two
of us referred to my journals as such). The following weekend she
and her husband came to our home and loaded said journals into
their van. He was clearly bemused by the whole activity and asked
her rather plaintively if they had enough room in their apartment
for this enormous shipment. She, beaming, said that she wasn’t
going to leave a single one behind; even the unbound supplements.
It made me feel so good that I was able to fill a genuine need. She
certainly wasn’t faking her enthusiasm but I did wonder whether
her husband would ever understand.
From that time on I subscribed to only three journals; “Seminars in
Breast Disease,” “Breast Diseases,” “Journal of the American College
of Radiology.” I did not waste any money having them bound (some
ev Y[