Among Friends

The Brown University Library provides critical resources, services and information to medical faculty, students and staff both on campus and off-campus at seven affiliated teaching hospitals in Rhode Island. Bradley, Butler, Memorial, Miriam, Rhode Island, Veteran's Administration and Women & Infants hospitals all benefit from this partnership. By working together with the hospital libraries, the University Library not only contributes toward the educational and research mission of the Brown Medical School, but also is a vital link in the chain of patient care.

The vast majority of Brown's medical faculty is in the hospitals and in the community, teaching medical students and residents, but mostly caring for the residents of Rhode Island. The total faculty of the Brown Medical School is 2,105, with only 163 on campus. Whether on campus or off, they are using library resources to improve patient care, and to take new leaps in thinking to advance medical science.

Studies show that physicians rely on medical information evaluated and organized by libraries to help them diagnose patients, choose appropriate treatments, reduce the length of hospital stays and avoid negative outcomes. As such, the Brown University Library is a vital component of the public health system for the State of Rhode Island. The Library provides physicians with both the resources and necessary librarian expertise to assist them in their work. Librarians help identify information sources, make critical connections to new research and train users on how to navigate increasingly complex information systems. The Library continually invests in staff development to ensure our librarians are familiar with the very latest materials available, and the technologies to access those materials.

Our collections for medicine are largely housed in the Sciences Library, sharing quarters with resources ranging from engineering to computer science, including biology. But there are relevant collections both at the Rockefeller Library (e.g. ethics and public policy) and at the John Hay Library (including a historical collection received from the Rhode Island Medical Society). The staff whose primary work is to serve the Brown Medical School are located at the Sciences Library, and they include the Medical School Librarian and two reference librarians. However, other staff members throughout the Library system also serve the medical community. They acquire and catalog resources, provide the off-campus access to our services, obtain from other libraries, articles and books that Brown does not own, and keep the Library website current. Unlike other medical schools, where the medical library is a separate entity, medicine is integrated throughout the Brown University Library. This provides our faculty and students not only with medical resources but also with important resources in social sciences, history and the humanities.

The Brown University Library understands that a vital part of our mission is to serve the needs of the medical community. To do this effectively, the Library must provide access to the latest research, implement technological resources to reach beyond the Library walls and have ready knowledgeable staff to help discriminate among research materials. In this way, the Library provides users - most of whom are off campus at the hospitals and who work around the clock - with the tools they need to do their work.

If you would like more information about the Brown Medical Library, please contact Medical Library Coordinator Tovah Reis at Tovah_Reis@Brown.edu or (401) 863-3334.