The Future of Medical Library ―PUMC Library's Unique Strategies of Building the Medical Documents Database

摘要

The development of Internet and telecommunication technology facilitates the transformation of traditional libraries to digital libraries. The leader in the Information World in the 21st Century will be the one that encompasses unlimited information resources and the one that can provide an all-new way of acquiring information. The Library of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences/Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), the medical specialists, and its medical records have been called "three treasures of PUMC". The name comes from its rich collections, good management of medical literature, and its excellent services for PUMC Hospital and other hospitals and doctors nationwide for eighty years. Its strategy in responding to the challenge of the digital technology is to identify policies such as establishing a database for the literature with special medical characteristics. This database will concentrate on medical literature, with a focus on the relationship between doctors and information. It will also explore obscure information, paying attention to the method of organizing information, and establishing a unique medical digital library. The principles of the project are describing data in a standard way, completing selections of resources, and building relationships between data that are reciprocal, and protecting copyright. The practical steps are: (1) building unique medical digital databases that include degree theses in the medical area, a database with information from professors and specialists,' precious ancient materials, teaching materials, and medical atlas; (2) enriching digital resources, absorbing medical literature from other resources; (3) improving digital medical information, and abandoning traditional forms of physical literature. The Library of PUMC will continue to have the quintessence of culture. It will develop traditional " three treasures." It will stretch the functions of the library with the aid of rapid technological development in network and communications and become the core linkage of the nations, or even the global information network.