The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library provides a comprehensive collection of biomedical reference tools, databases, evidence-based practice resources, image collections, educational software, and books and journals in support of programs in medicine, nursing, public health, physician associates, bioinformatics, and the basic sciences. A small print collection is housed at the School of Nursing, allowing students access to health care information related to courses as well as other health-related information sources. EliExpress (Yale Library’s delivery service) transports library books daily among the libraries across the campus and to the School of Nursing at West Campus.

The Nursing Information Resources website is the gateway to an online collection of health-care related databases, evidence-based practice resources, and electronic books and journals. In addition to these online resources, students have access to the Medical Library’s rich collection of resources including books, images, educational software, and a large unique collection of rare medical books, medical prints, photographs, and memorabilia.

All Yale University students have off-campus access to all electronic resources including electronic books, journals, and databases. Librarians work to create seamless access to full-text electronic resources. Remote access is available throughout the School of Nursing, the Medical Library, and across the University. The library also lends laptops to students in the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health.

The School of Nursing librarian spends time both at the School and in the Medical Library. Librarians provide reference assistance and in-depth consultation, conduct tours, teach classes, acquire and organize the collection, lend materials, and provide a scan and deliver service.

The Medical Historical Library contains one of the world’s finest collections of rare medical books, journals, prints, posters, drawings, and photographs, as well as current works in the history of medicine. There are 325 medical incunabula, more than seventy-five manuscript volumes from the twelfth through sixteenth century, and one of the best study collections of weights and measures in the world. Special strengths in the collection are the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, Boyle, Harvey, Culpeper, Haller, Priestley, and S. Weir Mitchell, and works on anatomy, anesthesia, and smallpox inoculation and vaccination. In addition, an outstanding selection of photographs, posters, and other images is available in the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library digitized collections.

The Cushing Center houses a unique collection of materials once owned by Dr. Harvey Cushing. A neurosurgeon and pioneer of brain surgery, Dr. Cushing was also an enthusiastic collector. The center is the home of the Harvey Cushing Brain Tumor Registry, which contains approximately six hundred brain specimens, glass-plate negatives, and accompanying patient files from the early twentieth century. The space also displays a portion of his rich collection of rare books, part of the Medical Historical Library’s collections.

Sterling Memorial Library, Yale’s main library and the largest library on campus, houses more than four million volumes and serves as the center of the library system. Other libraries in the Yale University Library system include the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Library, the Marx Science and Social Science Library, the Law Library, and the Divinity Library. All libraries are open to students for study purposes.