Updated: Fall 2023
The Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library supports the education, research, patient care, and community service missions of the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) by meeting the information needs of students, faculty, staff, and the local health sciences community. The library offers a full complement of services, including 24×7 worldwide access to scholarly bibliographic and clinical resources, borrowing privileges, use of individual and group study areas, photocopying and printing, and document delivery/interlibrary loan service. The library also provides expert instruction in the use of information resources, and access to professionally trained librarians for research and patient care related literature search assistance.
The library’s staff of 31.5 FTE employees provides traditional in-person assistance along with remote help via virtual reference and chat services. The library spends approximately 2.8 million dollars each year acquiring scholarly resources and its collection contains over 25,000 electronic journals, nearly 28,000 print and electronic books, and 162 searchable databases in the biomedical sciences, clinical medicine, public health, and affiliated fields. All electronic resources can be accessed through the Lewis Library website at https://library.unthsc.edu and are available to UNTHSC students, staff, and faculty from anywhere at any time. For those wishing to study, collaborate, and socialize in person, each of the library’s three floors is available for student and faculty use 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Lewis Library manages the HSC Fort Worth Data Repository, a research data hosting service for HSC-affiliated faculty, staff, and students. The repository provides convenient tools that allow researchers to deposit, publish, and manage datasets, key functions regarding meeting funder mandates for the secure archiving and sharing of research data. HSC’s data repository uses an open-source application called the Dataverse software, developed by Harvard University, and is hosted by the Texas Digital Library.
Lewis Library also maintains the UNTHSC Scholarly Repository, known as UNTHSC Scholar, an online resource that preserves intellectual works created by UNTHSC faculty, staff, and students and enables discovery of these works by the international scientific community. You can view repository items, including student theses and dissertations, at https://unthsc-ir.tdl.org/. In addition to working on digital content creation and preservation, Lewis Library operates the University Archives, which includes rare books and other UNTHSC historical artifacts. The archives offer users the opportunity to access historical material in osteopathic and physical medicine as well as items related to the founding and administration of the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine and the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
Lewis Library uses OCLC’s online resource management system known as WorldShare Management Services (WMS) to acquire, process, and provide access to its collections. Students and faculty may obtain books and journals not held in the library by using the Tipasa web-based order and delivery system. Additionally, the library participates in TexShare, a state of Texas cooperative library program. TexShare allows UNTHSC students, staff, and faculty physical access to and borrowing privileges from all public libraries as well as various public and private institutions of higher education in Texas. As a member of the University of North Texas System, the library is able to gain access to a wide array of electronic resources outside the health sciences. Lewis Library has also been an active participant in the Network of the National Library of Medicine since the 1980’s and is additionally a member of the South Central Academic Medical Libraries Consortium (SCAMeL), a group of 21 academic medical/health science center libraries in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. The library’s participation in these collaborative endeavors ensures that UNTHSC students and faculty have access to the world of information beyond the walls of Lewis Library.
Lewis Library has been home to a Regional Medical Library (RML) of the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM SCR) since May 2016. The RML originally served the South Central Region of the Network and as of May 2021, is serving as the coordinating body for Region 3. The library’s service as the RML is based on a National Institutes of Health award, Cooperative Agreement 1UG4LM012345-01. As a unit of the National Library of Medicine, the Region 3 office aims to advance the progress of medicine and improve public health through increased access to health information within the states of Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. The RML extends the services and programs of the NNLM and the National Library of Medicine by partnering with health-focused agencies and organizations, public health entities, community-based organizations, libraries, and the general public to offer outreach, funding opportunities, and educational programming throughout the region. In addition to its traditional services to the UNTHSC community and its role as host to a regional office of the National Library of Medicine, the library administers a handful of other important programs. Since 2017, Lewis Library has managed the John S. Marietta Memorial Medical Library for the JPS Health Network, the public hospital and clinic system based in Fort Worth and the surrounding county. In cooperation with JPS Administration, Lewis Library provides professional clinical librarian support throughout the main hospital facility along with electronic access to a robust collection of clinical care information resources. Beginning in 2018, Lewis Library assumed responsibility for maintaining UNTHSC’s records program to preserve and protect information that is vital to the essential functions of the organization. In compliance with the Texas State records management program, the UNTHSC records program ensures that state government information is retained an