Corey Williams
Today, our Honors Library Research class went on a two hour field trip to the Baystate Health Sciences Library. First, the Health Sciences librarian showed us their incredible website, which is used by medical students and professionals. Then, we were taken on a brief “tour” around the library, which was a bit smaller than I imagined. There were many aspects of the library that impressed me. One impressive aspect of the library is their amazing databases that are available on their website. The two databases that I found most interesting are “Culture Vision” and “Micromedex 2.0”. Culture Vision allows users to gain information about the medical beliefs of people from a wide variety of cultures. This is important for physicians so that they do not perform a procedure that goes against someone’s religion or beliefs. It is also interesting to see how different cultures feel about various medical procedures. Micromedex 2.0 allows users to compare various medications to see whether or not the medications can be taken at the same time without causing harm. This is important for pharmacist because they need to inform their people about the risks of combining their medication. Another thing that impressed me was the space saving shelving system, which has expanding and retracting shelves that save a lot of space. These are very expensive, therefore you will not see them in most libraries. The information available in this library appears to be user
