Government Shutdown and Hospital Libraries

Medical librarians were asking questions yesterday on Twitter and on Medlib-l about the impact the government shut down will have on medical library operations.  Will PubMed be up? What about Docline?

There was some uncertainty.  Alisha Miles has summed up the latest information (that we know of) in a blog post.  PubMed, NLM, Docline, and MedlinePlus websites all have notes (click on links to see the images of the notes) regarding their status during the government shutdown.

Of course being librarians we are focused on how it will impact library services, to get a perspective of how it will impact health care and hospitals check out the Forbes article, “Government Shutdown Hits Research, Teaching Hospitals, Residency Programs.”

As bad as it is, we might consider ourselves somewhat lucky.  At least the websites and backbone service programs (PubMed and Docline) we use are up.  There are other sites and industries that are not.

Alisha pointed out on her blog that ERIC (eric.edu.gov screen shot) is down. And while this tweet got a snort of laughter out of me, NASA’s website is down and redirecting to http://usa.gov (screen shot).
sarcasticrover

The White House website is down, but interestingly the Senate and the House of Representative‘s websites are up.  I am refraining from making a bevy of sarcastic comments about essential government services right now.

**Update**
Vanderbilt’s Eskind Medical Library has a REALLY good list of what is up and what isn’t.
http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/diglib/news/2013/10/federal-resources-affected-by-government-shutdown/

4 thoughts on “Government Shutdown and Hospital Libraries”

  1. Thank you for the link back Michelle! I also enjoyed the tweet from the @NLM_news that posted updates then responded to my question of who was in office: “@alisha764 — Hi. Many of us are here, doing basic housekeeping tasks needed before we depart. Max. of 4 hrs. allowed. Signing off…”

    That was nice of them to respond.
    The NASA comments are pretty funny! Such as this one: @SciMedLibraries
    “”Happy 55th Birthday, NASA! Now Everybody Go Home” -space.com/23022-nasa-hap…”

    Speaking of this how about “Happy National Medical Librarians Month, many of your resources are no longer Up-To-Date.”

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