The Hospital Library is Crucial to Quality Healthcare

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Abstract
In a 1988 report, an advisory committee of the Medical Library Association (MLA) wrote that “no one would argue against information as the foundation for efficient cost-effective business or against access to knowledge as a pre-requisite for developing new knowledge.” Yet the increasing number of threats to the hospital library—largely from within the industry—suggests that many hospitals do not value information in the same way their counter-parts in other businesses do. In the first of two articles this issue on hospital library and information services, the executive director of the MLA uses the MLA's experience and a variety of research findings to restate the case for the hospital library's vital role in quality care.