Background: This presentation will describe the successes and challenges of advocating for and building a collection of physical titles to support the medical humanities in a mostly digital academic health sciences library. When opened in 2017, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' School of Medicine Library contained no shelving for physical books, and collection development focused almost exclusively on textbooks and databases. Now there exists a small but yearly budget for the development of the health humanities collection, and widespread support within the library team.
Description: An interest in student wellness and holistic health led the librarian to promote medical humanities within the library and to the school of medicine (SOM). A large part of this awareness and advocacy work included the provision of physical books to read that were unrelated to coursework. Through a combination of proposals to library leadership, SOM student input, building alliances with other librarians and School of Medicine (SOM) faculty, and perseverance, a medical humanities and graphic medicine collection were created. Challenges included promotion of the collection, acquiring shelving, overcoming preconceived attitudes, gathering usage statistics, and keeping track of the books. Employee changes in both the [University] School of Medicine Library and the SOM, along with changing interests of the SOM students have led to greater interest and integration of the medical humanities collection into student life and curriculum.
Conclusion: Through advocacy, partnerships and perseverance, the medical humanities collection has become an integral part of the [University]’s School of Medicine Library. The collection now has a yearly budget, a grant to expand and diversify titles has been secured, and new ways to promote the books and engage with our community are currently being planned.
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