摘要：Australia suffered from an economic crisis during the 1980s and subsequently adopted the National Competition Policy in 1994 to escape from this crisis. As a result of this policy, hospitals were organized into networks to reduce management costs. Consequently, some hospital libraries were obliged to close or downsize in response to budget cuts by hospital administrations. Even under these severe circumstances, however, hospital librarians continued to serve their clients. In Victoria, health librarians, including hospital and medical librarians, established Health Libraries Inc. for the purpose of cooperation and exchanging information to make libraries better, however, obtaining sufficient funding was difficult. So, teaching hospital libraries negotiate with university about funding them to serve university students and staff. However, because hospital administrators and officers are often oblivious to the need for library funding, health libraries are often neglected in delivering the money from university, if librarians do not keep their eyes on the flow of money. In Australia, librarians are usually required to be qualified not by law, but by history; and this circumstance seems to have enabled the quality of health libraries to be maintained despite the harsh situation that has resulted from a competition policy.
