Companion encylopedia of the history of medicine

databases associated with the Human Genome Project. Collaboration for resource sharing through library automation between Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and activities at the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Library are described. Iain Milne, of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Library, describes the use of automation at that institution and, in one cogent statement, describes the plight of many of the great historical medical libraries. "Library managers ... have the difficult task of balancing the needs and limited resources of their parent body with their wider responsibilities as curators of a historic collection.... Although regarded as a valuable resource by readers from outside the College, many of the members who actually paid for the library made little use of its services. Those who did, used the current material, which, ironically, was cut to save money" (p. 175). In summary, the objectives set forth by Broering in her introduction have been met. This book represents a snapshot of the state of the art at a specific time in the development of medical libraries. Some of what is described here is being overtaken by events, but much of it still lies in the future of many libraries. Future volumes of this type (probably published electronically) should deal more with topics only hinted at in this book; one would like to learn more about integration as well as connectivity between different types of systems-clinical and scholarly, for example. This is work that is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, but increasingly evident, as any review of recent Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care proceedings will show. One would also like to learn more about libraries as publishers of locally developed institutional files, an activity exemplified by the rapidly proliferating gophers. High-Performnance Medical Libraries is strongly recommended as a reference tool for librarians; I intend to consult it frequently.