The development of an information resource center for academic family medicine

The discipline of family medicine covers a broad area of interests which often leads to duplication of information and lack of awareness of useful information resources. In an era of limited financial and time resources, it is in the best interest of large departments to consolidate departmental and scholarly information and to educate faculty members, residents, and medical students in the effective use of information retrieval systems and other sources of information. This paper presents the development of a small departmental center to organize and manage family medicine related information and resources and implementation of that information in the activities of an academic family medicine department to support teaching, research, and patient care.