The success of a clinical librarian program in an academic autopsy pathology service

Residents in pathology must acquire a broad base of knowledge in all areas of medicine and the basic medical sciences. We report our experience with the first Clinical Medical Librarian (CL) program used to aid resident training in anatomic pathology. This program was developed by the Lister Hill Library of Health Sciences (LHL) of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to test the value of a CL program in filling the clinical needs of medical students and residents by providing key recent references to the wide variety of diseases seen in a busy autopsy service. Use of a CL was accepted completely by both faculty and residents as a method of increasing their efficiency in evaluating the recent literature on diseases seen in the autopsy service. Our use of this program broadened the scope and extent of specific case-oriented medical literature read by both residents and faculty.