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Of all the libraries in all the educational institutions of our world, there is none quite like this one.… That large, comfortable, book-lined room … is a sanctum containing the lore and the collected reminiscences of the art of healing. It is a museum, a portrait gallery, a storehouse of the literature of medicine’s past, and a refuge from the hurly-burly of modern scientific technology that surrounds it. For those of us who are privileged to care for the sick or to carry out the research that makes that care possible, the Yale Medical Historical Library has been at once a safehouse from daily disquiets and a nurturing spring for renewal and strengthening of purpose. There is no laboratory or patient-care area of our medical center that is more than a few minutes walk from that high-vaulted, balcony-rimmed reading room and its layers of treasured stacks.”–Sherwin Nuland, M.D., Doctors: The Biography of Medicine, 1988 With more than 100,000 items, from twelfth-century manuscripts to current journals of medical history, the Medical Historical Library is a unique resource. Its treasures inspired Nuland to write half a dozen books, including How We Die, for which he won the National Book Award in 1993, and most recently, The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Reflects on Medical Myths. It allows Yale to offer a strong program in the history of medicine. The Historical Library is the loveliest part of the comprehensive, 410,000-volume Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library. In spite of its gracious architecture, the medical library is not really cloistered from “modern scientific technology”: in addition to its books and its nearly 2,600 current journals and 1,500 e-journals, a full range of advanced information systems provides access to the international medical literature and multimedia teaching systems. Virtually every medical publication in the world is available to Yale students and faculty. The Cushing/Whitney Library belongs to the 1o million–volume Yale University Library system. Yale medical students and faculty make particular use of the Epidemiology and Public Health Library, which contains over 25,000 volumes and subscribes to 350 current journals and numerous computer databases, and the Kline Science Library, which has over 350,000 volumes and receives almost 2,000 current periodicals, many in the life sciences. In addition, collections ranging from the Lillian Goldman Law Library to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library allow unlimited exploration of questions that cut across disciplines and span history. |
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Last modified: Wednesday, 11-Aug-2004 15:00:30 EDT. (PL) |