“Libraries are such a critical part of the training of physicians”

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Zell McGee, MD

Dr. Zell McGee, Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, enthusiatically endorses the work of HSL.  He talks about his experiences with HSL in the following three-part audio interview.

 
 

 

Introduction: 

Resources, images, voodoo, and zombies:

The importance of HSL and its critical role in the training of physicians

2 thoughts on ““Libraries are such a critical part of the training of physicians””

  1. I can agree to a large extent. When I was in university, the library was the best place to study. However with today’s access to information, libraries are less critical than they were. I mean when students can log on to Wikipedia & WolframAlpha to find answers to just about anything, who needs a library?

  2. You raise an excellent point about how university libraries are changing. Libraries are, indeed, rapidly making as much information as possible available where people need it – at your home, on the road, at your work desk, at your local cafe. It is still true that high quality information resources are not all free, so libraries continue to purchase or negotiate licenses so that library users can have access to the essential, evaluated knowledge that is needed to educate health professional students, inform cutting edge research, and provide high quality patient care. Librarians are quite happy that good information has become easier to find and more convenient to access through web search engines and tools like Wikipedia – we use them daily ourselves! As a result, librarians spend much less time leading people to basic factual information, and much more time teaching people how to find and evaluate the best evidence for their purposes. Librarians also help people with difficult, comprehensive or complex questions, lending their extensive finding and selection skills to systematic reviews, rare clinical cases, development of clinical guidelines, safety and quality initiatives, as well as meta-analysis of the literature. Some library buildings are experiencing decreased use but students tell us this library is still a great place to study, as well! See our October 31, 2011 post, “I Love HSL Because…”

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