Developments in health sciences libraries since 1974: from physical entity to the virtual library

The concept of the Integrated Academic Information Management System was introduced in the 1982 report of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) sponsored by the National Library of Medicine (Matheson & Cooper, 1982). As originally conceived, the library was to play the lead role in bringing disparate institutional databases and systems into a single institution-wide network. In the last ten years, the idea has evolved from concentration on the library's role in information management to information management in the total organization. In fact, the concept has now gone beyond the "academic" and has been renamed Integrated "Advanced" Information Management System since it applies to hospitals and other organizations as well. The goal is to create organizational mechanisms within health sciences institutions to manage information more effectively and to provide for a system of access to those engaged in patient care, research, education, and administration. The applications of IAIMS concepts in health sciences institutions have been significant in improving information management and in using new technologies and, as Lindberg et al. (1992) note, they have placed health sciences institutions in the forefront of information systems integration and communications networking.

Although the original intent of placing libraries at the center of IAIMS activities has been realized in only a few institutions, the significance of the concept to libraries is evident when one sees that the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association has featured four symposia on the subject during the last ten years. The latest, "A Decade of IAIMS," includes papers which show the continued growth of IAIMS and the library's role (Lorenzi, 1992b).

By 1991, eighteen institutions had been awarded grants or contracts by NLM to assist institutions in planning and developing models for implementation (Lindberg, 1992, p. 245). The impact of IAIMS and "IAIMS-like" developments on the organizational structure of health sciences institutions has not been fully documented. It is apparent that neither libraries nor computing centers alone are able to support the technology required for IAIMS but must have close ties with telecommunications. Some institutions have already brought libraries, computing, and telecommunications under the same umbrella. Feng and Weise (1988) discussed the evolution of this partnership at the University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB). Since that time, the health sciences library, academic computing, administrative computing, and telecommunications report to a single vice president for information services at UMAB. Additionally, as seen at a number of other institutions, academic computing has become a part of the library or the library and computing report to a chief information officer. Telling signs of this emerging new type of organization were the subjects at the twenty-third Annual Seminar on Academic Computing in 1992. Topics included discussions and talks on OCLC, IAIMS, new models for libraries and computer centers, and questions such as, Is there a future for academic computing?