The Hospital Library Serves the Whole Community
By Patty Kahn
The Niles Perkins Health Science Library, located at PBMC on the ground floor of the Pen Bay Physicians' Building, offers a quiet, comfortable place to obtain needed medical information. Of course the library's primary focus is to meet the information needs of Pen Bay Healthcare clinicians, but it also serves a much wider clientele. Medical and nursing students use the library in a steady stream, as well as other students in related disciplines such as physical therapy. Health providers on the islands call the hospital library for help, and it is the nearest resource for health professionals in the community who are not affiliated with PBH. And it is open to the general public – did you know that? – with books, newsletters, and online resources for patients and family members, and computers available for public use.
Not every community hospital has a medical library, but at PBMC the library has always been considered essential to good practice. Medical information is a constantly growing and changing body of knowledge, and a career in health care means an ongoing effort to keep up with the current literature. The library's collection consists of over 225 journals, both print and online, and a continually updated core collection of texts in every medical and nursing specialty and subspecialty area, as well as materials for the general public. The book collection is included in the statewide MaineCat database. The online collection includes books, journals, and databases, most of which are available from home or office as well as at the hospital. The library has co-sponsored an annual "Literature and Medicine" reading seminar at PBMC for over ten years, so there is a small but growing collection of fiction and non-fiction to support that activity.
Librarian Patty Kahn offers training to PBH staff on how to search the biomedical literature, how to access full-text journals, books, and databases, how to order and receive articles, how to set up a research update service, and how to use technology to keep track of important resources. She is just a phone call away from the public librarians in the area, and has often helped them obtain health-related materials. She is also available to assist members of the general public with computer research of health information.
Thus the hospital library is an important community resource – and by community, we mean the wider community of Knox, Waldo, and Lincoln counties. The library, like PBH, serves residents of that entire community. In addition, it is connected to all other medical libraries in Maine, New England, and the rest of the country, with a constant give-and-take of interlibrary loan materials. Everything's available – within minutes if necessary.
The library is staffed on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It's always a good idea to call first – 596-8456 – or e-mail pkahn@penbayhealthcare.org. And visit the library's public web site – www.pbmc.org/library – which has links to the online catalog, excellent selected resources for health care information, and much more. See you at the library – whether online or in person.