The Institutional Medical Library

Abstract

Although a good personal study center may be the physician’s most valuable continuing education tool, and although modern textbooks are useful in answering many clinical questions, the physician’s collection at home or the office cannot possibly approach that of the hospital, medical society, or medical school library. Medical libraries have changed and will change even more during the next decade. Librarians have new skills and are acquiring others. Most physicians are not using the library optimally, partly because they are unaware of the ways in which libraries can serve them.

For the general practitoner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to overtake him.

William Osler₁