Standards for Health Sciences Libraries

STANDARDS FOR health sciences libraries is difficult because of the variety of libraries providing services to individuals in a health care setting. These include academic, hospital and special libraries (e.g., pharmaceutical companies). Even within these categories, one can see a great deal of variation. For example, an academic health sciences library may serve one or two programs in the allied health field, a medical school, or a health sciences center serving a multitude of academic programs. Among hospital libraries there is a great deal of difference between the large teaching hospital with extensive responsibilities for graduate medical education and the hospital responsible for health care delivery in a rural community. Service standards are defined as a level of excellenceor adequacy in the performance of library service, and will be the scope of this paper. They may be identified as standards, guidelines, norms, requirements, principles, and/or lists. Service standards may be qualitative (e.g., the informational, educational and research-related needs shall be met) or quantitative (e.g., x number of seats per number of enrolled students). Traditionally, standards were quantitative and looked at the budget, staff, collection size, and physical facilities. The current trend is to develop qualitative standards which are derived from a philosophical point of view. This paper will first discuss the standards that have been instru-mental in improving hospital library service. It will then discuss the standards in academic health sciences libraries, and finally will revie