Abstract
Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing in 1859 [1] heralded the beginning of modern nursing. Nurses in the nineteenth century had not yet achieved professional credibility, therefore, many of the early texts were written by physicians. When nurses began to publish books, librarians and nurses did not always recognize their value, and many were discarded. For example, of the historical items mentioned by Allen [2], only one copy of both Makers of Nursing History (1928) by Pennock and Nursing Ethics (1900) by Isabel Hampton Robb can be found in Ohio. It is vital that libraries now recognize and preserve the important works of nurses so that nursing students of the future have them available, both as historical background and as a basis for comparison with current nursing issues. Many books of value to the history of nursing often exist in small nursing collections and should not be discarded without much thought. The significance of many publications can be determined only in retrospect, after their full impact has been appreciated. Meanwhile, it falls to librarians who manage nursing collections to make the best decisions about what to keep, both for current and future users of the collection. On the other hand, shelf space is a problem for many academic libraries, and weeding is necessary to maintain a workable and usable nursing collection that contains up-to-date clinical information. While the collection development policies and space limitations of each library will determine how much historical material librarians will acquire and which books they will withdraw, this article proposes some basic criteria for deciding which history-related materials to keep in nursing collections and what to withdraw and offers a bit of guidance on what to purchase.
Highlights
The Indiana University Center for Bioethics (IUCB) and the Ruth Lilly Medical Library (RLML), Indiana University School of Medicine, joined forces in 2005 to augment online access to bioethics-related materials by developing the Bioethics Digital Library (BEDL) [1]
Though hit counts (n ϭ 321) provided by the survey software indicated that more individuals accessed the survey and perhaps read the scenarios or other sections, only 274 librarians responded to portions of the survey
The 132 librarians responding to the question about 9 potential barriers to widespread implementation of the information specialist in context (ISIC) role selected a median of 4 items
Summary
The Indiana University Center for Bioethics (IUCB) and the Ruth Lilly Medical Library (RLML), Indiana University School of Medicine, joined forces in 2005 to augment online access to bioethics-related materials by developing the Bioethics Digital Library (BEDL) [1]. BEDL’s goal is to acquire or borrow unique bioethicsrelated materials and special collections for digitization, to preserve the digitized materials, and to provide open access to these materials through a full-text indexed, Web-integrated database. To enhance discoverability of BEDL materials, content will be linked to citation records in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature ETHX on the Web database [2] as well as other appropriate digital repositories, creating a network of bioethics resources with multiple access points. Besse Library serves the student body of Ursuline College, a small private institution that has about 450 undergraduate nursing students and 100 graduate nursing students. Because Ursuline is historically a religious institution, materials on the spirituality of nursing and values or ethics in nursing are collected
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