About
The Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library serves primarily the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; the Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, the Schools of Dentistry and Nursing; the Life Sciences division of the College of Letters and Sciences; related institutes in biomedicine; and the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The collections are broad in scope and designed to support the teaching, research, and patient-care related needs of its primary clientele. In addition, the collections are a resource for the health, life sciences, and psychology communities. The total collection includes more than 683,778 print volumes and provides access to thousands of electronic resources including journals, databases, and other materials.
Louise Darling (1911-1999) is the founding director of the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library. She received degrees in Botany (B.A.) from UCLA and Botany (M.A.) and Librarianship (Certification and Credential) from the University of California, Berkeley. As a civilian in the U.S. Army Library Service she supervised Army libraries for Hawaii and the Philippines (1944-1947). After returning to UCLA, she founded and headed, until her retirement in 1978, the Biomedical Library which was named for her in 1987. She was a leader in education for librarianship and innovative uses of computers in libraries.
Her achievements are documented by the reputation of the library she founded and to which her name is attached, by the number of former staff members who went on to lead medical and university libraries, and by the wide respect evoked by her memory.
