LIBRARIES AND THE PROVISION OF HEALTH INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC

In the wake of the consumer movement in the health care field, public and medical libraries have been experiencing an increase in demand for health-related information from the public. This study focuses on the institutional foundations, resources, and services provided by libraries which are open to health care consumers.;Some of the librarians and health care professionals interviewed expressed concern that health care consumers may misunderstand the medical literature, misuse medical information, or become unduly upset by reading about their own health or the health of family or friends. Nonetheless, all of these libraries were attempting to provide services to health care consumers that were appropriate for their institutional and library policies and with concern for provision of current and accurate health information to health care consumers.;Six cases were selected for study to be representative of the following types of libraries: a medical society library, an academic health sciences library, a hospital library, a hospital-based patients' and consumer health library, a hospital library-public library network, and a community health information center library. The study showed that in these cases higher levels of commitment for service to health care professionals resulted in proportionately lower levels of service to health care consumers and lower priorities for acquisitions of popular health materials. The origins of the consumer health information services affected the perceptions and levels of commitment to such services. The organizational structure and size of staff were found to have an effect on the flexibility of service policies for consumer heath information services among the medical libraries but not among the public libraries. Sources of funding and priorities of the libraries had an effect on collection development policies and on the relative strengths of the collections of these libraries in medicine and in popular health. The presence of a patient education program in one of the hospital libraries was concomitant with a higher level of organizational commitment to consumer health information services and to a higher level of usage of such services than in a hospital library without a patient education program.