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A Brief History of the Regional Medical Library at the University of Washington on the Occasion of Its 30th Anniversary |
Dr. Michael DeBakey set as a goal "to achieve fingertip control of the literature, of all that is known about the causes, treatment, and prevention of disease and to make this knowledge available to researchers, educators, and practitioners," when he was proposing the Medical Library Assistance Act in 1965. Did he foresee that a community health aide in Nome would click with fingertips on a desktop computer to access full-text health literature?
Since the Regional Medical Library (RML) was established at the University of Washington, we have worked to provide health professionals -- and recently health care consumers -- with "fingertip control of the literature." The methods have varied over the past 30 years, but the goal remains the same.
In 1968 the National Library of Medicine (NLM) selected the University of Washington Health Sciences Library as the site of the Regional Medical Library for the Pacific Northwest: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Gerald J. Oppenheimer, Library Director, became the RML Director as well. The University of Washington has had the longest continuous service of any RML. The New York Academy of Medicine (since 1970) and UCLA (since 1969) are the only other institutions that have served continuously as RML sites.
In 1968 the obvious way to achieve "fingertip control" was for every health professional to have access to the premier subject index, Index Medicus, and to have free access to the health literature that was indexed there. Interlibrary loans from the University of Washington were subsidized by the RML until 1979. The RML began to lobby hospital administrators and physicians to establish hospital libraries with Abridged Index Medicus, small "core" collections, and librarians who could provide interlibrary loans. At the same time, hospital librarians showed how effective they are. With these combined efforts, between the years 1971 and 1989, the percentage of hospitals with libraries increased to the point where almost every hospital with at least 100 beds had a library with some access to Index Medicus and a mechanism for getting interlibrary loans.
In the mid-1970's MEDLINE began to make fingertip control much faster and health libraries in the Pacific Northwest took good advantage of it. The RML provided training to health library staff. The Pacific Northwest was known as the region where a MEDLINE class was never cancelled for low enrollment! The RML also offered, and continues to offer, back-up reference service for health librarians who have exhausted their local resources.
Once librarians and their patrons could find out instantly, via MEDLINE, about the best articles, those patrons naturally wanted to get full-text fast. Automation innovations often arrive first in the Pacific Northwest; our enormous distances require the latest in communication methods. We had the first region-wide electronic mail usage for ILLs (1981), we were early converts to telefacsimile, we had the first community hospital library with a dedicated Internet connection (1993), and were the first region to have 100% of all professional hospital librarians connected to the Internet (1998). Health librarians have ensured that their own patrons are well served and the RML has helped those librarians through regional management of such programs as DOCLINE and SERHOLD.
By the mid-1980's, early goals had been reached: every health professional affiliated with a "big-enough" hospital had access to a library. We then turned our attention to the unaffiliated -- the growing numbers of non-hospital based health professionals; health professionals serving rural, inner city, and minority populations; and alternative health professionals. Ours was the first region to have an outreach program, the TELE Project funded by NLM in 1988. We are still in the outreach business ten years later, only more so! The motto of the TELE Project was "remote is not removed" and our goal was to help health professionals have access to information at the time and place of need.
In 1988 Sherrilynne Fuller became the second Regional Medical Library Director for the Pacific Northwest. Also in 1988, the RML staff began using the Internet; outreach and Internet have increased hand-in-hand. The Internet has increasingly become the way to connect the unaffiliated. This RML houses the Web server for the entire national NN/LM program and has led the way in Internet training for health librarians and health professionals.
The NN/LM Pacific Northwest Region has been particularly successful at attracting NLM funding for special outreach projects:
With the Tribal Connections Project, we really do have a community health aide in Nome clicking with fingertips on a desktop computer to access full-text health literature. The Regional Medical Library staff, as representatives of the National Library of Medicine (sometimes called NLM's "field force") are in a unique position -- bridging national policy and research with the practical, local, health care environment.
Current RML Staff:
Sherrilynne Fuller, Director
Neil Rambo, Associate Director (on leave)
Nancy Press, Acting Associate Director
Maryanne Blake, Network Librarian
Michael Boer, Systems Coordinator
Cathy Burroughs, Special Project Librarian
Perri Lynch, Administrative Assistant
Linda Milgrom, Network Librarian
Roy Sahali, Special Project Manager
Chholing Taha, Network Librarian
Former RML Librarians:
Gerald Oppenheimer, Director Emeritus
Nancy Blase
Judy Barlup
Dorice Des Chene
Jim Ekendahl
Randy Erickson
Lois Hansen
Martha Hassell
Ethel Hill
George Hunter
Arlene Kairoff
Mary Ellen Lemon
Dale Middleton
Eve Ruff
Jan Schueller
Carole Stock
Kate Warren
Robert J. Wilson