History of Medical Libraries and Medical Librarianship

The authors of this book in fifty years of marriage have observed and been part of the evolution of medical libraries and librarianship, academia, and health related research and education. Having gotten married as undergraduates, they have made this professional journey together supporting and learning from each other’s experiences. This is the third book they have coauthored.Michael Reed Kronenfeld, MLS, MBA, AHIP, FMLA is University Librarian Emeritus, A.T. Still University of the Health Sciences. Since receiving his MLS in 1975 he has worked as the archivist/processor of the papers of Senator Lister Hill, as the Director of the Library and the Educational Resources Center at a state health department, as the Library Director and web master for a public teaching hospital and, for his last 17 years before retirement, as the University Librarian for a medical university, retiring in March of 2019. He has been an active member of the Medical Library Association throughout his career. In his forty-four years in the profession, he has been interested in and published on the history of the medical library profession and on the impact of technology in driving this history. Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita in Sociology, SSFD, Arizona State University. Her research areas are medical sociology and aging and the life course with special focus on health policy, health care utilization and health behavior. She serves as editor of the research annual, Research in the Sociology of Health Care, published by Emerald Press. She is coeditor of Health. She has served as Chair of the Medical Sociology Section, American Sociological Association (ASA). She is currently the secretary-treasurer of the Retirement Network, ASA. She is a past President of Sociologists for Women in Society.

• AcknowledgementsPrefaceChapter 1 – The Era of the Library of the Office of the Army Surgeon General and John Shaw Billings – 1836 – 1898Chapter 2 - The Era of the Gentleman Physician Librarian – 1898 to 1945 Chapter 3 - The Era of the Development of the Clinical Research Infrastructure (NIH), the Rapid Expansion in Funded and Published Clinical Research and the Emergence of Medical Librarianship as a Profession – 1945 – 1962Chapter 4 - The Era of the Development of the National Library of Medicine, Online digital Subject Searching (Medline) and the Creation of the Health Science Library Infrastructure– 1962 – 1975 Chapter 5 - The Medline Era – A Golden Age for Medical Libraries – 1975 – 1995Chapter 6 - The Era of Universal Access to Information and the Transition from Paper to Digitally Based Medical Libraries – 1995 – 2015 Chapter 7 - The Era of the Digital Health Sciences Library – 2015 –Bibliography

This work is exhaustive in its scope but is also meticulously researched. It is a solid choice for a medical librarianship graduate-level class... This book will prove absorbing to any aspiring or actual medical librarian; the content is essentially a ringside seat to America from 1836 to the modern day as seen through the lens of medical librarianship with its ties to medical and societal change. This reviewer takes away a new appreciation for the ground covered by her profession, but also a respect for the formidable challenges that lay ahead. It is clearly a work of great meaning for both authors and is a welcome addition to the other chronicles that explore our world.