POSITIONING THE LIBRARY AT THE EPICENTER OF THE NETWORKED BIOMEDICAL ENTERPRISE

The changing economic environment in which our biomedical enterprises operate presents unparalleled opportunities to the profession of medic al librarianship. Evidence-based medicine, patient empowerment, asynch ronous learning networks, and research colaboratories each involve a n ew type of shared information, or access to information in new ways or by different people. These tasks are ones with which librarianship is directly involved. Librarians are therefore placed perfectly to provi de new products and services. To position the library at the epicenter of the networked biomedical enterprise we must meet three challenges: We must align the library's business strategy with that of the larger enterprise. We must provide services in ways that will scale-up to en able new business strategies. We must measure the effectiveness of ser vices in ways that document their role in supporting the enterprise.