The Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library

Mission Statement

The mission of the Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library is to support the educational, research and patient care activities of the faculty, students and staff of the Mount Sinai Medical Center. The Library implements its mission by providing access to biomedical information resources in paper, digital and electronic formats, and by serving as a resource on communications, Web and computing issues for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Vision Statement

The Levy Library will be the leading provider of biomedical information for the Mount Sinai Medical Center, using innovative and emerging technologies to facilitate medical education, research and clinical practice. The Library will serve as a knowledge center, connecting faculty, students and staff to information resources and services, regardless of time or place.

The Library is and will continue to be the nerve center for scholarship and research. Housing resources and services, the Library also serves as an instruction center, computing commons, study, and collaboration space for members of the Mount Sinai community. As a knowledge repository, the Library will provide leadership in the archiving, storage, and management of institutional records and information resources. Librarians will continue to evaluate, select, organize and provide access to materials in a variety of formats.

The involvement of Library and technology professionals brings institutional success to each key area of the Levy Library’s Vision in education, research, and clinical practice.

Education:
• Promote information literacy and facilitate the pursuit of lifelong learning across the continuum for all students, faculty, and staff.
• Partner with faculty to instruct students and residents in developing clinical questions and finding the best evidence.
• Work with faculty in the development and management of interactive, visual, and engaging courses and the preserving and indexing of curriculum content.

Research:
• License research databases, software tools and data management systems for the sciences, allied health, and clinical communities of the institution.
• Collaborate with the scientific community to create infrastructure and access tools for data manipulation, management, retention, retrieval and use.
• Partner with faculty to facilitate new forms of scholarly communication in the digital age.
• Collaborate with the IRB to promote librarian expertise in database searching to reduce institutional risk and exposure of conducting clinical research.

Clinical Practice:
• License resources and develop guides for the quick retrieval of information and documents used for clinical guidelines and everyday practice.
• Partner with the care teams to provide information support and expert searching for complex and unusual clinical cases.
• Collaborate with developers of institutional knowledge management systems such as the electronic medical record and clinical desktops to provide seamless linking to the medical literature.
• Assist in the identification and management of patient care tools and guidelines.

The Levy Library will play a major role in the institution’s success in the key areas of education, research and clinical practice, and it will also support the business practices of the medical school through the use of innovative technology, applications and systems, and technological support. The Levy Library will take the lead in managing computing and web innovations to achieve institutional goals.