UCSF Library

UCSF Library
Name	UCSF Library
Established	1873
Location	San Francisco, California, United States
Type	Academic health sciences library
Director	Sandra F. G. Leong
Website	Official website

UCSF Library is the academic health sciences library serving the University of California, San Francisco campus system and its affiliated hospitals. It supports clinical care, biomedical research, and health professions education across multiple campuses, providing collections, instruction, and digital services to students, faculty, clinicians, and the public. The library interfaces with major medical centers, research institutes, and professional organizations to advance access to biomedical knowledge.

History

Founded in the 19th century concurrent with the development of professional medical schools in California, the library developed alongside institutions such as University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, and the Mount Zion Hospital system. During the 20th century it expanded holdings in response to advances at institutions like the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and partnerships with regional libraries in the California State Library network. Notable administrative periods intersected with leaders from organizations such as the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries and initiatives influenced by federal policies including the National Library of Medicine programs. The library's growth paralleled events tied to the Spanish flu pandemic aftermath, the rise of molecular biology at institutions like the Salk Institute, and the emergence of biotechnology firms such as Genentech in the Bay Area.

Collections and Resources

The library maintains extensive print and electronic collections emphasizing clinical medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, and the basic biomedical sciences, with resources commonly used by scholars affiliated with Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Gladstone Institutes, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Holdings include subscriptions to major biomedical journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and JAMA, along with databases provided by publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, and Springer Nature. The library aggregates resources from aggregators and platforms including PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ClinicalTrials.gov. It houses specialized collections supporting fields linked to centers such as the Institute for Health Policy Studies, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the Department of Psychiatry.

Services and Facilities

Patrons access services including reference consultation, systematic review support, interlibrary loan, and clinical decision support used by clinicians at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion, and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco. Facilities include computer workstations running software from vendors like Clarivate and Elsevier for citation management and literature discovery, as well as study spaces modeled after academic libraries at institutions such as Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The library offers instructional spaces for course integration with programs like the UCSF School of Nursing and the UCSF School of Pharmacy, and provides access to document delivery coordinated with networks such as OCLC.

Special Collections and Archives

The Special Collections and Archives preserve rare materials documenting local and global medical history, including manuscripts, archives, and photographs related to figures and institutions such as Joseph Lister, Florence Nightingale, Osler, and regional histories tied to Angel Island immigration and the development of public health in San Francisco. Collections include institutional records from research centers like the San Francisco AIDS Foundation era collections, materials relevant to public health events like the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and manuscripts associated with pioneers affiliated with the campus such as researchers from the Warren Alpert Medical School networks. The archives collaborate with curators at museums like the National Museum of American History and repositories such as the Bancroft Library.

Digital Initiatives and Open Access

The library leads digital preservation and open access initiatives, managing institutional repositories that collect scholarly works from faculty connected to programs like the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Francis I. Proctor Foundation. Digital projects deploy standards and tools from organizations including the Digital Public Library of America, the Open Archives Initiative, and software such as DSpace and Fedora Commons. The library supports open access publishing policies aligned with funder mandates from agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and provides author services for compliance with terms from publishers including Taylor & Francis and Oxford University Press.

Research and Instructional Support

Embedded librarians collaborate with research teams across centers such as the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute, the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, and the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases to provide systematic review methodology, data management planning, and bibliometrics employing tools like Scopus and Web of Science. Instructional programs integrate with curricula at the UCSF School of Dentistry and the UCSF School of Medicine, offering workshops modeled on pedagogies used at Stanford University School of Medicine and outreach aligned with competencies from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Outreach, Partnerships, and Community Engagement

Outreach programs connect with community health organizations such as Bayview Hunters Point Health Center, public libraries in San Francisco Public Library branches, and statewide consortia like the California Digital Library. Partnerships include collaborations with professional bodies such as the American Public Health Association and interinstitutional projects with the University of California system partners, leveraging cooperative agreements similar to those in the California Academic & Research Libraries community. The library hosts public exhibits and lectures in concert with civic institutions like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and community education programs supported by foundations such as the Kresge Foundation.

Category:Academic libraries in California Category:Medical libraries in the United States