Library
The Alumni Medical Library is located on the 12th and 13th floors of the Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) Instructional Building (L) and serves the Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Graduate Medical Sciences (GMS), Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM), Public Health (SPH) and Boston Medical Center (BMC). The 11th floor 220-seat Testing Center and classrooms also serve as dual-purpose student study space when not reserved for classes.
The Library offers 790 seats; 1,000 power connections; 139 ethernet connections; 29 wireless access points throughout the library, classrooms, and computing labs; 80 student computers across three computer classrooms; and 45 computers in two public computing areas.
The main entrance is located on L-12; students predominantly use this floor as study space as it is equipped with large study tables, individual study carrels, public computers, printers, scanners, soft seating, and a group study room. The Library’s L-13 Quiet Study floor renovation was completed in February 2019. This floor provides 226 student study seats, including six individual study pods, four group study rooms and two tutor rooms. The renovation provided new HVAC system, lighting, flooring, furniture, and expanded disability accessible restroom facilities plus one gender-neutral restroom. Visit the Library at 72 E. Concord St., L-12 .
Services
Master of Library and Information Science (MLS) or equivalent degree prepared librarians staff the Reference Desk, located on L-12, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Reference and research assistance are available on a drop-in basis, by appointment, or via email at refquest@bu.edu. Access Services/Circulation staff provide circulation services anytime the library is open, including access to course reserves, interlibrary loan articles and books, and 3-D anatomical models.
BUMC librarians provide a broad range of educational programming, including curriculum-integrated information retrieval, evaluation, and management skills classes. The library education program emphasizes lifelong learning, information literacy, and skills specific to searching, critically evaluating, and managing information.
Collections (e.g. e-books and e-journals)
Students, faculty, and staff may access licensed online resources 24/7 on- or off-campus via the library website, using their BU login name and password authentication. Alumni Medical Library collections are accessible through the online Library Catalog, 700+ databases, and 120+ quality filtered subject guides. Collections consist of 6,800+ e-journals; 12,600+ e-books; 25,000+ books in the circulating, reference, and course reserves stacks; and 29,000+ volumes of bound print journals in medical campus storage. Popular medical campus databases include PubMed, Web of Science, and EMBASE.
In addition to the resources of the Alumni Medical Library, medical campus students, faculty, and staff have access to the BU Libraries’ collections, comprised of 1.9 million books, 248,000+ serial titles, 152,000+ media titles, 111,000+ serials, and 2 million+ e-books. BU students, faculty, and staff may request physical items from any of the BU Libraries free of charge via an Intra-Library Request and access the BU Libraries’ electronic materials online at any time or place.
Beyond the BU Libraries, medical campus students, faculty and staff have access to materials via the Alumni Medical Library’s Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Service, which participates in resource sharing throughout an extensive national network of libraries. BU is a member of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) and the catalogs and materials of the 19 BLC member libraries are also available. BLC members include Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library, Northeastern University Snell Library, and fifteen other New England research libraries. Medical campus students and faculty also have admittance to Harvard University Countway Library of Medicine through its dual role as the Boston Medical Library.
Computing Help and Printing
The dual-purpose L-1101 Testing Center, redesigned in 2014, is a 220-seat testing center and study space. L-11 also houses three dual-purpose classrooms, the BUMC Computing Help Desk and Student Laptop Support Services. McNary R-107 is also available as 24/7 study space when not reserved for classes. Computing Help Desk staff support courses requiring technology integration and provide student laptop software installation, VPN client configuration, Windows and Mac updates, virus scanning software updates, and removal of viruses and spyware. The Computing Help Desk offers laptop loaners for students experiencing technical issues for short and long periods of time, depending on the need.
Laser printers, scanners, and photocopiers are available on every floor of the library and printers are available in the McNary classroom R-107 and the L Building basement. BU MyPrint, a BU ID-based system, provides a semester print allotment of 500 sheets of black and white printing to students and 100 sheets to faculty and staff. Adobe Creative Suite is also available on L-12.
