The National Gallery of Art Research Library

Doing research for your art history class? Want to find out what that piece or art in the attic is worth? Consider using the National Gallery of Art Research Library, accessible on Metro via the Smithsonian (Orange and Blue lines) and Archives/Navy Memorial (Green and Yellow) stations. Once you get to the National Gallery of Art (NGA), take note that the library is on the first floor of the East Building (i.e., the more modern-looking building).

According to its website, “The Library contains a comprehensive collection of more than 300,000 books, periodicals, and documents on the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture. The emphasis is on Western art from the Middle Ages to the present (particularly Italian, Dutch, Flemish, German, French, Spanish, and British schools) and American art from the colonial era to the present. Microform and videodisc collections, along with extensive vertical files, supplement the Library’s book holdings.“

Reference staff at the NGA Library will also respond to inquiries by telephone (202-842-6511), so feel free to call in and get some research help, or just find out in advance what the library can offer you.

Visiting (and using!) the National Library of Medicine

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is open to the public for research. Your federal tax dollars pay for the institution, so consider it your civic right to take advantage of their resources!

Located amidst the National Institutes of Health “campus” in Bethesda, MD, getting to the NLM requires planning, but it isn’t especially tricky. If you plan to park on campus, you’ll have to go through a mild security check at the gate. Address is 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894. But the NLM is also metro accessible: get off at Medical Center on the Red Line, and follow the instructions here for walking or taking a bus to the gates.

At the NLM, you can gain access to one of the most extensive and diverse collections of books, journals and electronic resources on medicine and health in the world! Doing research for your nursing or psychology classes? You’ll want to exploit the knowledge and expertise of the reference staff at the NLM. More about reference services can be found here. You can even e-mail your research questions from home!

The “stacks” at the NLM are only accessible to staff, and you can request to have materials retrieved for you. However, you might find that the 4,500 textbooks, indexes and audiovisuals – or the five recent years of approximately 150 medical journals – or the computer terminals with access to a variety of medical and health databases available in the Main Reading Room for browsing will suit your research fine! Go on, and check out what the NLM has to offer.