Among Friends Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2000

A Letter from the Chair
by Fraser Lang 

The Medical School Library is a critical resource for students, faculty, and, indeed, for the entire Rhode Island medical community. I recently met with Tovah Reis, Medical Library Coordinator, to learn more about the collection in this, the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Brown University Program in Medicine.

Twenty- five years ago, when the Program in Medicine was established, Brown agreed to build library resources concentrating in research and preclinical issues. The affiliated hospitals pledged to focus their collections on clinical resources. Much has changed in more than two decades. Hospitals, constrained by tight budgets today, have cut their collections and now more and more medical students and faculty look to Brown to provide critical resources to support their needs. The educational mission of the collection has taken second place to the urgent need for clinical resources.

On the other hand, the MD 2000 curriculum now connects students with clinical faculty from day one of the educational program. The clinical resource, therefore, also play a greater role in support of the educational program than might have been the case in the past.

As demands on the medical collection from within and without the university continue to expand, budget dollars for acquisition become ever more scarce. When possible Brown receives needed articles from such medical schools as Tufts, Boston University and the University of Massachusetts at Worcester. However resource sharing is based on reciprocal arrangements. The increased availability of electronic subscriptions can provide easier access to medical journals but this is not necessarily a cost savings. A recent article in the George Street Journal cited the rising journal subscription prices; The Journal of Comparative Neurology, for example, has an annual price of $15,294!

Brown's challenge is put in perspective when we compare the collection of 846 journals subscriptions with several other medical libraries: Dartmouth has 2400 subscriptions, the University of Massachusetts, 2370 and the University of Connecticut, 1690. To the 846 journals held by Brown, we need to add that the affiliated hospital libraries currently hold 1,160 journal subscriptions, but only 49% of the titles are unique to the affiliates and not held by Brown.

Efforts to expand resources available are constantly underway. The library staff identifies specific electronic resources that are available through the world wide web, so that students and faculty can access the resources whenever they need them without coming physically to the library. Funding from government agencies and private foundations are aggressively pursued. The capital campaign for the Medical School currently underway had earmarked 3 million dollars for its library.

When you next pass by the Science Library, you might consider that the medical collection housed within may have a greater impact on the lives of Americans than any other part of our University library collection. It profoundly affects the quality of medical services provided to the citizens of Rhode Island and, in preparing physicians that graduate from the medical school and practice around the world, touches lives everywhere.

Among Friends: Next Article | Previous Issues