A note from Library Director Gretchen Arnold, about a new series: "Building the Library of the Future". Look for a new installment in this series weekly, as Gretchen describes the Library's work in the areas of education, research, patient care, and also discusses its collaborations and partnerships, space improvements, and metrics. Please enjoy this introduction to the series.




I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the work done by our staff to create a modern and forward-facing library for the UVA Health System.  We still maintain most of the traditional services of a library which are important core services, but we are also focusing our energies and expertise on building a new type of library that can harness emerging technologies in health care information.  Libraries have always been about knowledge, and today knowledge creation, preservation, and distribution comes in many formats, including data.  The Health Sciences Library is following the lead of the National Library of Medicine.  Recently, the director of the National Library of Medicine, Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN PhD, said that NLM “is not your mother’s library” and the same could be said for the Health Sciences Library.

The Library recognizes that its three greatest assets are its people, its resources and collections, and its space.  All are critically important to our user population.  It is our responsibility to ensure that all of these assets are leveraged to bring the greatest value to the missions of the UVA Health System.  What will follow in the coming weeks is not an exhaustive list of what the Library does, but a selected discussion of some of the new ways of thinking about what a library can do to help our students, clinicians, and researchers utilize the best health information.  This has been, and will continue to be, a journey and we can only make educated guesses about new technologies and ways of thinking. We hope that you will join us and, more importantly, help us create a new future for our Library.