Boston University Medical Campus Library

The Alumni Medical Library, occupying 30,000 square feet on the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth floors of the Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) Instructional Building (L), serves the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, School of Medicine (BUSM), BUSM Graduate Medical Sciences (GMS), and School of Public Health.

The Reference Desk, located on L-12, is staffed by Master of Library and Information Science (MLS) or equivalent degree prepared librarians Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5:00pm. Reference and research assistance are available on a drop-in basis, by appointment, or via email at refquest@bu.edu. Access Services staff provide circulation services, including access to course reserves, interlibrary loan articles and books, and 3-D anatomical models.

Students, faculty, and staff may access licensed online resources 24/7 on- or off-campus via the library website, using their BU login name and password authentication. Alumni Medical Library collections may be accessed through the Library Catalog, 700+ databases, 120+ online quality filtered subject guides, and the GMS Portal. Collections consist of 25,000+ books in the circulating, reference, and course reserves stacks; 29,000+ volumes of bound print journals in medical campus storage; 6,800+ e-journals; and 12,600+ e-books. Evidence-based medicine resources include ACP Journal Club, BMJ Clinical Evidence, Cochrane Library, DynaMed, and JAMAevidence. Streaming visual resources include Bates’ Visual Guide to Physical Examination and JoVE scientific experiments videos.

In addition to the resources of the Alumni Medical Library, GMS students, faculty, and staff have access to the BU Libraries’ collections, comprised of 1.9 million books, 248,000 serial titles, 152,000 media titles, 111,000+ serials, 2 million+ e-books, and 49,000+ media titles. Students, faculty, and staff may request physical items from the BU Libraries free of charge via an Intra-Library Request and access the BU Libraries’ electronic materials online any time or place.

Beyond the BU Libraries, medical campus students, faculty, and staff have access to the catalogs and materials of members of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) libraries, including Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library; Harvard University Countway Library of Medicine through its dual role as the Boston Medical Library; and extensive materials through the Alumni Medical Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Service, which participates in resource sharing throughout the U.S.

BUMC librarians provide a broad range of educational programming, including curriculum-integrated information retrieval, evaluation, and management skills classes. The Assistant Director of Library & Information Management Education also co-directs the two-credit GMS Introduction to Biomedical Information course which prepares students undertaking the required master’s capstone and/or thesis. The library education program emphasizes lifelong learning, information literacy, and skills specific to searching, critically evaluating, and managing information.

The Alumni Medical Library offers 790 seats; approximately 1,000 power connections, including 400+ in the dual purpose L-1101 Testing Center and study space; 139 ethernet connections; 29 wireless access points for laptops throughout the library, classrooms, and computing labs; 80 student computers in three computer classrooms; 45 computers in two public computing areas; and laptop loaners for students experiencing technical issues. Laser printers, scanners, and photocopiers are available on every floor of the library, as well as printers in the McNary classroom R-107 and the L Building basement. MyPrint, a BU ID-based system, provides a print allotment per semester to students of 500 sheets for black and white printing, and to faculty and staff of 100 sheets.

L-12 is predominantly used as student study space, with large study tables, individual study carrels, public computers, printers, scanners, soft seating, and a group or quiet study room. The library’s L-13 Quiet Study floor renovation was completed in February 2019. This floor provides 226 student study seats, including four group study rooms and two tutor rooms. The renovation provided new HVAC system, lighting, flooring, furniture, and increased and disability accessible restroom facilities, including one gender neutral restroom.

The dual-purpose L-1101 Testing Center, redesigned in 2014, is a 220-seat testing center and study space. L-11 also houses the Library Computing Services, including the Library Computing Help Desk and Student Laptop Support Services. Library computing staff support courses requiring technology integration and provide student laptop software installation, VPN client configuration, Windows and Mac updates, virus scanning software updates, and removal of viruses and spyware.