Are Medical Libraries Necessary only for Doctors? The Activity of a Specialist Library for the Users on the Basis of The Main Library of Medical University of Lublin

Abstract

The specifics of scientific activities of specialist libraries results from the place they occupy in a certain institutional structure, the role played by users expecting specific services and environmental local conditions or resulting from the place of a given library in a network of similar specialized libraries. The question stated in the title whether doctors (and people related to the health care system) are the only ones to use the medical library is just a rhetorical gimmick because the times has passed when the specialization of the library meant narrowing the circle of recipients to professionals in a specific field of knowledge. In a world where popular search engines take over the role that only specialist from a given field have done so far (the case ‘doctor Google’), also specialized libraries perceive differently their functions and are perceived differently by the users themselves who increasingly often see libraries as a third place and not just as an institution for borrowing books.