Jo Ann Bell, Health Sciences Library
Articles printedin the School of Medicine's Review regarding the development of the Health Science Library. These and other articles may be found in the records of the Development & Alumni Affairs Office and the Chancellor's Office in the University Archives.
Citation for these articles are: "Tales of early days," Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1982, p. 5.
"A brief look back," Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1982, p. 6.
Tales of early days
Jo Ann Bell laughs when she talks about the early days in the development of the Health Science Library.In September 1969 she was the library -- literally. She had a five foot square office in the university's library but no money, books, quarters or staff.And while she lacked a single volume, she was already insisting that a facility being planned for 15,000 volumes would be too small.
She calls the story of the library's early days "The Perils of Pauline." She has shared her tales at meetings of the Medical Librarian Association, and she vows on a stack of 20-year-old medical texts that every unbelieveable story she tells is really true.
As soon as the word spread that she was developing a library, the donations began to pour in. "Usually this material was published in the early 1900's,"she says. "Soon I had the perfect collection -- perfect for 1920, that is."
Steamed Journals
The small collection grew slowly, but soon space became a problem which Bell solved by moving into an empty cafeteria on campus.It wasn't quite deserted, however, and she was able to claim only the back section where the steam tables were located.
"I had a serving line, steam tables with steam still connected, and an ice cream machine without ice cream," recalls Bell."The chairs from the abandoned food service were stacked almost to the ceiling.But when you don't have a single shelf, you're glad to have any place to stack volumes."
Within a few months the library moved to a reading room in the Science Complex that is now the biochemistry department.By this time the collection filled several hundred boxes, which Bell says were dumped in the middle of the floor of the new home.
"It was a colossal mess made worse by the fact that I still had no shelves.We did have tables though, and the books were stacked on top of and under them."
But soon the shelves arrived along with a budget to start subscriptions and purchase new books.Things were starting to look up for the library, except for a cantankerous photocopy machine which once caught fire five times in one day.
Dirty Books Party
In May of 1972 the library moved to the Belk Building which would be its home for the nine years. Bell and her books had moved three times in three years, but this time shelves were in place.
There was just one problem. Older journals had been in storage in a dark, damp gymnasium basement, where the heat and humidity had fostered a lush growth of mildew.Bell and her staff dusted and vacuumed for three nights but felt their mission was impossible.The next day they invited the faculty to a "dirty books party" to help clean the 270 boxes of mildewed journals.
The materials were cleaned and arranged, the party was a success, and in two months all the shelves in the library were filled to overflowing once again.
A brief look back
The roots of the Health Science Library are connected to the School of Allied Health and Social Professions which in 1969 hired a librarian to serve their students and faculty and the medical school. The library was originally located in a seminar room in Joyner Library and moved from there to a vacated cafeteria.In the early days the librarian's emphasis was on working with faculty to identify primary resources needed for their programs. Donations made up the basic collection, and the Bowman Gray School of Medicine and the University of Kentucky shared their duplicate volumes with ECU. Dr. Robert Phillips of Greensboro and Mrs. Donnell Cobb of Goldsboro also made generous contributions to the collection.
When the library moved to the Science Complex in 1970, the librarian, assisted by one clerical employee and student assistants, began making regular purchases to provide a solid foundation for users.
1971 is perhaps the red-letter year in the library's history. It was then that the General Assembly appropriated $350,000 for the establishment of a Health Affairs Library and $1.4 million to start a one-year medical school. HAL, as it was known, was directed to serve the schools of allied health, nursing and medicine, and it became a branch of the university's Division of Health Affairs.
In 1972 the library moved to the Belk Building and began a decade of steady growth in its collection, staff, users and budget. It was approved as a MEDLINE center and resource library by the National Library of Medicine. It became the learning resource center for the Eastern AHEC program and for health professionals from throughout North Carolina.
Two double-wide modular units provided by the medical school were attached to the Belk Building to provide more space for the collection, and the library was open for users more than 100 hours a week. A campus delivery service started, and two branch libraries opened, one on the main campus and the other at Pitt County Memorial Hospital.
The library's location in the Belk Building was always considered an interim home that would be left when the medical school's permanent facilities were completed. By 1979 the floor plans for the new library at the Brody Medical Science Building were finished, and in 1980 the library changed its name to the Health Science Library.
