Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship covers a wide range of areas beyond traditional medical libraries. This helpful guide provides an overview of the health care environment, academic health sciences, hospital libraries, health informatics, and more. This single volume provides a sound foundation on health sciences libraries to students, beginning, and practicing librarians alike.

Intended for students interested in careers as health sciences librarians, this insightful book presents a current view of trends and issues in the field of health librarianship from leading scholars and practitioners. With health care reform and the Affordable Care Act driving up demand for ready access to health and biomedical information by both health care providers and healthcare consumers, health librarianship plays a critical role in facilitating access to that information. Health Librarianship: An Introduction places health librarianship within the health care context, covering librarianship within this specific environment as well as other perspectives relevant to health librarianship. The book addresses the basic functions of librarianship—for example, management and administration, public services, and technical services—within the health care context as well as issues unique to health librarianship like health literacy, consumer health, and biomedical informatics. This book is an outstanding textbook for library and information sciences classes and will also be of interest to those considering a career change to health librarianship.

This comprehensive textbook of health sciences librarianship provides the library student and new librarian with the background and skills necessary to handle day-to-day activities and provide quality services in a health sciences library or a more general library serving students and practitioners in the health professions. The book has 16 chapters, each authored by an experienced medical librarian and is are organized logically into 4 sections: The Profession, Collection Services, User Services, and Administrative Services, Each chapter contains photographs, figures, tables, and charts illustrating the essential concepts introduced. Overseen by a 3-member editorial board of leading professors in medical librarianship programs, this authoritative text provides students, beginning, and experienced librarians with a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art medical librarianship.

Get the foundational knowledge about health sciences librarianship. The general term “health sciences libraries” covers a wide range of areas beyond medical libraries, such as biomedical, nursing, allied health, pharmacy, and others. Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship provides a sound foundation to all aspects of these types of libraries to students and librarians new to the field. This helpful guide provides a helpful overview of the health care environment, technical services, public services, management issues, academic health sciences, hospital libraries, health informatics, evidence-based practice, and more. This text provides crucial information every beginning and practicing health sciences librarian needs—all in one volume. Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship presents some of the most respected librarians and educators in the field, each discussing important aspects of librarianship, including technical services, public services, administration, special services, and special collections. This comprehensive volume provides all types of librarians with helpful general, practical, and theoretical knowledge about this profession. The book’s unique "A Day in the Life of . . . " feature describes typical days of health sciences librarians working in special areas such as reference or consumer health, and offers anyone new to the field a revealing look at what a regular workday is like. The text is packed with useful figures, screen captures, tables, and references. Topics discussed in Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship include: overview of health sciences libraries health environment collection development of journals, books, and electronic resources organization of health information access services information services and information retrieval information literacy health informatics management of academic health sciences libraries management and issues in hospital libraries library space planning specialized services Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship provides essential information for health sciences librarians, medical librarians, beginning and intermediate level health sciences/medical librarians, and any health sciences librarian wishing to review the field. This crucial volume belongs in every academic health sciences library, hospital library, specialized health library, biomedical library, and academic library.

The services provided by the twenty-first century medical library are evolving, from circulating print materials, interlibrary loan, and traditional reference desk services to services like in depth literature searches, systematic reviews, and research impact studies. To support these changing services, the medical library must re-evaluate, reassess and redeploy its staff, providing them with new opportunities to grow and develop in new areas to support the evolving needs of the library. However, staff cannot be expected to embrace new roles without buy in, training and without developing a plan for assessing whether or not they are successful in their new roles. Transforming Medical Library Staff for the Twenty-First Century focuses on how the medical library can redeploy its staff to support these new services through actively engaging and empowering them in the process. This book shares best practices in developing and motivating staff to accept and welcome the changing priorities of medical libraries.