Idaho Health Information Systems Collection, 1966-1977

These papers were compiled by Carol Bettis (later Carol Oakes), a librarian at Boise State University. They consist of memos, letters, meeting minutes, proposals, reports, agreements, brochures, and bibliographies, relating mainly to efforts by Boise area librarians and health professionals to establish systems to deliver medical literature and health information to the Boise medical community in the 1960s and 1970s. These efforts included a proposal to establish a state medical library (1968); a cooperative program between Boise State College and the Ada County Medical Society to solicit donations of medical books and periodicals (1968); a partnership agreement between Boise libraries with health-related collections to share library resources via union catalogs, interlibrary loan, and courier services (1970); the establishment of the Health Information Retrieval Center coordinated by the Idaho State Library, which provided access to the newly-created Medline database (1974); and the proposed creation of a statewide Idaho Biomedical Communications Network (1975).

Carol Bettis represented the Boise State library in many of the meetings that led to the formulation and implementation of these initiatives, including the meetings of three related groups, Treasure Valley Medical Library Association, Idaho Association of Health Information Librarians, and Boise Area Medical Librarians.