Elihu Yale himself donated Yale College’s first two medical volumes. A century later, in 1813, the Medical Institution of Yale College opened, housing a collection of over 1,200 volumes later transferred to the Yale College Library. In 1917 the medical school restarted a separate library in the newly built Brady Laboratory. 

The current medical library was founded thanks to the efforts of Dr. Harvey Cushing (1869–1939), considered one of the founders of modern neurosurgery, and two other renowned medical specialists, Dr. Arnold C. Klebs and Dr. John F. Fulton. Calling themselves “The Trinitarians,” these three physicians gave their extensive library collections to Yale to form the nucleus of one of the great medical historical libraries in the world.Completed in 1940, the medical library is located on the main floor of the Sterling Hall of Medicine. The central rotunda honors Harvey Cushing, who graduated from Yale College in 1891 and returned in 1933 as Sterling Professor of Neurology.In the late 1980s, Betsey Cushing Whitney donated $8 million to enlarge and refurbish the medical library. The medical library was renamed the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, honoring Cushing, her father, and Whitney, her husband (1904–1982; Yale 1926), owner and publisher of the New York Herald Tribune and patron of the arts.

A renovation in 2019 introduced a large team-based learning classroom, eight rooms for small-group learning and independent study, a studio for video production, and the Information Commons with workstations, comfortable seating, and an information help desk. These spaces are designed for flexible use and incorporate technologies to support the YSM curriculum and accommodate individual study preferences.

The medical library provides access to biomedical information in all formats. If the library does not have access to a resource, patrons can request the item through free services such as Interlibrary Loan and scan and deliver services from other libraries. 

Library guides and video tutorials provide 24/7 help on a wide range of library topics, from getting started with a research project to using resources like EndNote. Most library-related questions can be answered on the medical library website, but students are encouraged to contact their personal librarian or AskYaleMedicalLibrary@yale.edu for assistance.

Yale affiliates can leverage librarians' instruction and subject matter expertise to upskill in everything from literature searching and citation management to data management, analysis, and visualization and AI tools. The medical library’s general instruction program consists of over 300 events per year open to the Yale community at no cost, most of which are eligible for CME credit. Furthermore, librarians teach in the curriculum in programs across the schools of the medical center and Graduate Medical Education, offering custom, innovative instruction sessions by request. 

The Evidence Synthesis Collaboration Service provides expert support for systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and other evidence synthesis projects through consultations, literature searching, instruction, and guidance on best practices for rigorous and reproducible research. The library also consults about scholarly publishing, open access, author rights, copyright, and other issues of scholarship.

The Medical Library provides research data support services that help biomedical researchers manage, organize, share, and preserve their data throughout the research lifecycle. The library also offers consultations, training, and guidance on computational workflows to support reproducible and data-intensive research.

The Medical Library’s Bioinformatics Support Program provides Yale researchers with access to advanced bioinformatics software, databases, and expert consultation services for analyzing and visualizing high-throughput omics and sequencing data. The program supports researchers through individual consultations, hands-on training, and collaborative guidance on topics such as RNA-seq, single-cell analysis, pathway analysis, and the use of computational tools and public bioinformatics resources. The library helps the Yale biomedical community conduct reproducible, data-driven research in across all health sciences fields.

Windows and Mac workstations are available in the Information Commons, equipped with a wide range of software including Microsoft Office, EndNote, Adobe Creative Suite, statistical packages (R, SAS, SPSS), and GIS applications such as ArcGIS. In addition, twenty-five widescreen monitors are available for users who wish to connect their own laptops. Yale users also have access to black-and-white and color printing and copying services, along with two scanning stations (one Windows and one Mac) located in the 24/7 study space. Laptops are available for short-term loan to Medical Center students who need temporary access to a computer. Additional equipment—including digital cameras, camcorders, and cell phone and computer chargers—may be borrowed from the circulation desk by anyone with a valid Yale ID. For more information about library technology services, please visit https://library.medicine.yale.edu/services/library-technology.

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library provides a comprehensive collection of clinical 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. The library provides access to more than 57,000 electronic books, 23,000 electronic journals, and 126 databases, in addition to more than 400,000 print volumes. Its holdings also include all Yale medical student theses, many of which are available online. Yale affiliates have access to the library’s electronic collections from any device wherever they are, as well as to the holdings of the entire Yale University Library system. 

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 the sixteenth century, and one of the best study collections of weights and measures in the world. Its holdings also include Yale catalogs, yearbooks, photographs, and other publications and ephemera related to the Yale School of Medicine, and a growing archives program focused on the School of Medicine community. 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. The library also owns an extensive smoking and tobacco advertising collection and the Robert Bogdan collection of disability photographs and postcards. In addition, an outstanding selection of photographs, posters, and other images is available online.

The Cushing Center, located in the lower level of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, houses a unique archive of materials collected by Dr. Harvey Cushing. The center is the home of the Harvey Cushing Brain Tumor Registry, which consists of approximately 600 brain specimens, glass-plate negatives, and accompanying patient files from the early twentieth century.

The Associates of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library are friends of the library who, through membership and other contributions, assist the medical library in its mission of serving the information needs of Yale students, faculty, and staff. Funds raised by associates represent unallocated money that can be used at the librarian’s discretion to support various projects. The associates host an annual lecture in the spring. Past lecturers include Nobel laureates, writers, professors, and surgeons general who have spoken on a wide variety of topics relating to medicine. A gratis membership for Yale medical students continues through their years of residency. More information is available online at https://library.medicine.yale.edu/associates.