COLLECTIONS:

Special Collections

University Archives

Collection Preservation

Research Collections:
Nursing Collection

Collection Overview
The nursing collection primarily supports the current and anticipated curricula, scholarly reading and research needs of the School of Nursing community from the beginning student to the more sophisticated and diverse needs of graduate students and faculty.  It also provides resources in bioethics and health information to the university as a whole and to appropriate economics, sociology, psychology, bioethics, and pre-medical classes.  There is comprehensive collecting of nursing materials in the English language, selected foreign language serial titles, and varying levels of bioethics and related health science materials. The collection provides historical materials in nursing as well as the most current resources in clinical practice.  Because of its comprehensive collection in nursing, the Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. Library serves as a resource library in nursing for the New England Region of  the National Network of Libraries of Medicine of the National Library of Medicine.

The Mary L. Pekarski Nursing Archives housed in Burns Library contain the  Rita P. Kelleher and the Josephine A. Dolan collections plus other collections.  It contains significant books, pamphlets, letters, pictures, oral-videotape histories, and other audio-visual materials  which provide archival, historical and research sources for the history and foundation of nursing as well as health care ethics.

Rapid advances in computer and networking technology have resulted in the acquisition of  electronic versions of the major health sciences indexes. The next area of major collection growth in electronic formats will be in electronic journals. The nursing collection program has included acquisition of electronic nursing journals since their inception. Digitized information and texts will be added when possible because they vastly improve a researcher's ability to identify and access research resources.

Wanda Anderson
Nursing Bibliographer
1-617-552-4457
E-Mail:  anderswb@bc.edu

Selected Resources

In the O'Neill Library:

•  Publications of Nursing Organizations: American Nurses Association (ANA), National League for Nursing (NLN), Sigma Theta Tau.  These organizations feature publications on nursing schools and educational  programs, accreditation, curricula, faculty, students, licensure, credentialing, career guidance, nursing practice, patient care, standards, ethics, legislation, politics, economics, research and statistics.

• Archival Materials in the Burns Library: The Nursing Book Collection consists of a collection of several hundred volumes which are important to the study of the history and ethics of the Nursing profession.  The Nursing and Medical Ethics manuscript collection contains the papers and memorabilia of the following:

  • The American Association of Nurse Attorneys

  • Colliton, Margaret A.

  • Dolan, Josephine (History of Nursing)

  • LaForet, Eugene G. (Bio-medical Ethics Collection)

  • Libraries and Information for Nursing Consortium

  • MacDonald, Mary

  • Medical Library Association

  • New England Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing

  • North American Nursing Diagnosis  Association

  • Northrup, Cynthia E.

  • Vaillot, Madeleine Clemence

  • Visiting Nurse Association of Boston

• Extensive holdings in the nursing journal literature, with microform copies when available.

• Bioethics: The O'Neill Library has an extensive collection of monographs, journals, and reference sources on bioethics, including Bibliography of Bioethics, New Titles in Bioethics, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Biolaw, various Hastings Center publications, and the online database Bioethicsline.

•  Microforms Collection:  Many microform sets complement the print and electronic resources.  They include a collection of over 7,000 nursing dissertations from the United States and Canada, History of Nursing Archives which includes the Adelaide Nutting Historical Nursing Collection, Calendar of Letters of Florence Nightingale, Selected Resources in Microfiche (SRIM) which is a selection of nursing and health sciences documents from NTIS.

• Works by and about nurse theorists and developers of nursing diagnosis including Sister Callista Roy, Marjory Gordon, Florence Nightingale, Virginia Henderson, Josephine Dolan, Dorothea Orem, Hildegard Peplau, Martha Rogers, Ernestine Wiedenbach, Imogene King, Dorothy Johnson, Faye Abdellah, Myra Levine, and Ida Jean Orlando.

• Government Documents:  The O'Neill Library collects about 80 per cent of documents published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

• Health Statistics:  Besides the online statistical indexes available through the Government Documents Department, there are important printed statistical sources such as Vital and Health Statistics of the United States,  World Health Statistics, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Annual Report of Vital Statistics of  Massachusetts, Health United States, Hospital Statistics, and Mental Health United States.

• Medical and Health Law: Among the publications covering health law are International Digest of Health Legislation, Faulkner & Gray's Medicine and Health, Regan Report on Nursing Law, Regan Report on Medical Law, Regan Report on Hospital Law, Biolaw, Nursing Case Law Reporter, and Speciality Law Digest: Health Care Vol. 1.

• Indexes in Print:  The major print indexes for nursing and health sciences in O'Neill Library are CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), International Nursing Index, Index Medicus, Nursing Studies Index 1900-1959, The History of Nursing, selected sections of Excerpta Medica and Hospital and Health Administration Index (formerly Hospital Literature Index).

On the Web (Restricted to the BC Community):

• Subject indexes to the literature:  CINAHL, MEDLINE, Bioethicsline, Alt-Health Watch, HAPI-Health and Psychosocial Instruments, SPORT Discus,  Sigma Theta Tau-Virginia Henderson Library, Health Reference Center.

• General Indexes:   BIOSIS, Web of Science-Science Citation Index & Social Science Citation Index, PsycLit, Sociofile, Social Work Abstracts.

• Full text electronic journals:  Online Journal of Knowledge Synthesis for Nursing.  Other electronic journals in nursing may be found at the following e-journal gateways: Project Muse, Springer Link, Wiley Interscience.

Research Guides
More information about available resources can be found in the following resource guides: Research Guide: Nursing and Nursing and Health Sciences Collection.
 
Interdisciplinary Elements of Subject Area
Special interdisciplinary subject materials:  Subjects important to the curriculum are acquired in varying depths in cooperation with other subject bibliographers in the library, (e.g., bioethics, health problems, appropriate areas of biology, growth and development throughout the life span, nutrition, economics, social problems, sociology, psychology, research methods, women's studies, computer technology, and death and dying).

Formats and Types of Materials
Formats collected include print, electronic, microform, and audiovisual. Types of materials include monographs, serials, and reference works including major indexes, abstracts, catalogs, bibliographies, yearbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, research guides, medical and nursing directories, statistical sets, handbooks, manuals, atlases, protocols and pharmaceutical guides.

Languages
English is the primary language of the collection but foreign language nursing periodical titles or outstanding foreign language nursing reports are acquired.

Geographic Areas (Subject Approach)
Materials with clinical information are primarily limited to the United States with a selected number from Great Britain, Canada, and Australia.  Nursing materials relating to theory, practice and research in nursing are collected on a global basis although usually limited to English language publications.

Time Periods (Subject Approach)
There is an interest in all periods but most materials on the history of nursing focus on the 20th century with a few titles covering earlier periods.

Date of Publication
Emphasis is on current materials and new developments.  However, older materials are ordered for replacement, preservation, missing items, and classics not owned.  

Subject Areas Collected by Library of Congress Classification Number
BCAT, the online catalog, can be searched by LC classification number to get a better idea of what specific titles the nursing collection contains.  For example, the command c=R724 will produce the beginning of a list of works on bioethics.  This list can be browsed by pressing the F8 key or typing f and pressing the Enter/Return key.