The things about the medical library that any student must to know: autonomous medical library users in Barcelona Autonomous University

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is located in Bellaterra, some 20 km outside the city of Barcelona, Spain. The UAB university campus covers an area of 260 hectares in Bellaterra. It is composed of teaching and research centers, libraries and laboratories, as well as the full range of services provided by what is in effect a university town, including sports facilities, shops, and permanent student accommodation; in other words, a complete complex of teaching and leisure facilities and services, which promotes a fully integrated academic and social life. The university community consists of 37,000 first and second cycle undergraduate students, 6,500 doctoral and post-graduate students, 3,000 teachers and researchers and 1,400 administrative and service staff. In addition, the UAB co-operates with universities and research centers throughout the worl d, especially countries in the European Union and Latin America.

UAB Library System is composed of 12 libraries and is ISO 9001 certified since March 2000. It was the first Spanish Library to get this quality certification. The University Medical Library is conformed as a network inside the system with the main Medical library in the University Campus and four other libraries in educational units in 4 hospitals in the area of Barcelona.

ISO 9001 certification is focused in process management which has give us the opportunity to standardize and to get the most of the resources available in the medical libraries, and being able to offer in all of the branch libraries the same level of quality to users. At the same time the electronic products, help us in this work of rationalizing bibliographic resources.

New trends in higher education goes to a more intensive use of the library resources, methods like PBL (Problem Based Learning) are increasing and students have a more practical work. Library and librarians are adopting a new rol.

In our presentation we plan to explain which problems we have found with reference of the informational background of the medical students when they arrive for the first time to our libraries and how we have implemented tailored courses to make them able to use as autonomous as possible all the available informational resources. We’ll also expose the work in progress with tutorials to assist user to search the better sources.