Medical Libraries

The hospital provides health education for children and adults in the Torrance area. Services include a community resource center that provides disease/disability information and a medical library. There are no geographic restrictions. The community resource center offers disease/disability information about arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other diseases. The special resource collection includes books, brochures, and videos; many of which can be checked out for up to seven days. A dedicated computer station with internet access to professional medical journals and other web resources, such as Ebsco Health Source Plus and Health Gate is also available. A research assistant is there to help clients and can offer additional research if information is not readily available on-site. A hospital-based medical library is staffed by two medical librarians and provides in-depth research ranging from diagnosis, treatment and etiology of diseases for physicians and nursing staff, to best practices and benchmarking guidelines for administrative personnel; over 2000 books and 250 journals covering the breadth of medical research and reference, including patient care, ethics, legal and business needs; and audio and video resource selections are also available. Interlibrary loans of articles, journals, books and videos via a network of national medical libraries is also available.