Magnet Maggie Visits Burlew Medical Library for Orientation

Despite my harrowing experience in surviving a collapse of books and documents while in Burlew Medical Library, I have returned to Burlew Medical Library to learn all I can about the  fabulous services and resources available to all staff at St. Joseph Hospital, Orange/CHOC. Here's what I learned in my initial orientation.

• Burlew Medical Library serves the information needs of all the staff at St. Joseph Hospital, Orange and Children's Hospital of Orange County. The medical library also meets the information needs of hospital patients and their families and even offers a website that is open to the public http://www.sjhhealthresourcecenter.org/ . This website attempts to direct lay people to authoritiative information. As a nurse. I find this website helpful to look up general information about health conditions with which I have little familiarity.
• The medical library is open weekdays from 8:30 - 5:00 but staff can access the library anytime by checking out the library key. The library is staffed by 3.2 FTE's and even has two librarians with Master's degrees who are also certified by the Medical Library Association. These people really know their stuff!!
• The staff are really friendly and welcoming. I guess they must really like it there because two of the staff have been there for more than 30 years. They are more than happy to show you around the library, explain how to navigate the library website, teach you the basics of literature searching, obtain documents for you and much more. BTW- the library website is password protected for the exclusive use of SJH/CHOC staff. Call the library if you don't know the password and id.
• Since more of their journals have migrated to electronic status, the library website is where it's at. Did you know that they now have more than 850 full text journals on their website? And that over 150 of these journals are nursing journals?  That's impressive!!
• The library website has some electronic books, but the majority of their books are in the physical library collection. To look up a book in the library, use CyBurCat.  CyburCat is linked prominently on the library website. If they don't have a book that you need, they'll borrow it for you from another library. All the nursing books and nursing journals are in a separate section of the library. The call numbers for all the nursing books end in NSG .
• This library has one of the best nursing collections I've ever seen. Julie Smith, MLS, Library Manager, tells me that years ago they received a grant from the National Library of Medicine  to support their nursing collection and that they have always maintained their committment to nursing resources.

         That's enough orientation for me for now. I'll be back again to learn much more about this outstanding
          resource and all of the library services available to staff.