History of the Biomedical Libraries

Prior to construction of the Dana Biomedical Library in 1963, the collection of medicine and biology was housed in Baker Library, the central library for the humanities and the social sciences on the Dartmouth College campus. On October 11, 1963, the Dana Biomedical Library, funded by Charles A. Dana, President, and Eleanor Naylor Dana, Trustee of the Dana Foundation, was dedicated. In 1973, recognizing the growing importance of audiovisuals in medical education, and in response to a critical space need, the Charles A. and Eleanor N. Dana Foundation made a substantial gift to Dartmouth to construct a third floor on the Dana Library housing a Learning Resource Center, providing a group of small classrooms for teaching purposes, and larger book stacks. In April 2013, The Dana Biomedical Library moved to the third floor of 37 Dewey Field Road.

The Matthews-Fuller Health Sciences Library opened its doors in January 1992 at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon. The library was given in memory of Louis B. Matthews, Jr., M.D., former Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs of DHMC, and Clinton B. Fuller, a long-time trustee of DHMC and former Overseer of Dartmouth Medical School. Funds for the opening collection of books were given in memory of Peter A. Lankenner, Jr., M.D., by his mother, the late Mrs. Wanda Lankenner. The Matthews-Fuller collection contains recent clinical materials, the complete nursing collection, and a small collection of books written for the patient.

The initial collection for Dana numbered approximately 65,000 volumes and was comprised principally of transfers from the Baker Library. Nearly 900 subscriptions were also transferred. Presently, the libraries' combined collections have grown to contain approximately 230,000 volumes. In addition to the print collections, users may access more than 4,500 online biomedical journals, and many clinical decision support tools, full-text information resources, and digital books.