A
health or medical library is designed to assist physicians, health professionals, students, patients, consumers, medical researchers and
information specialists in finding health and scientific information to improve, update, assess or evaluate health care. Medical
libraries are typically found in
hospitals,
medical schools, private industry and in medical or health associations. A typical health or medical library has access to
MEDLINE, a range of electronic resources, print and digital
journal collections and print reference books. The influence of
open access (OA) and free searching via
Google and
PubMed has a major impact on the way medical libraries operate.