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Lane Medical Library

About Lane Library

Our Mission

Lane Medical Library accelerates scientific discovery, clinical care, medical education and humanities through teaching, collaboration, and delivery of biomedical and historical resources.

Guiding Principles

Further the mission of Stanford Medicine and Stanford University
Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion through our resources and services
Be dynamic and user-centric
Exceed expectations as a trusted, world-class source of expertise

About the Library

We are an innovating and forward-thinking medical library designed to support Stanford Medicine’s research, education, and patient care objectives. We are part of Education Programs and Services (EPS) within the School of Medicine

Our History

We are proud of our rich history dating back to 1882. Lane Library was originally part of Cooper Medical College, the first medical school in the Western United States, located in San Francisco. Pauline Lane donated a third of her estate to Cooper Medical College to officially establish Lane Medical Library in 1906. The gift was made in memory of her late husband Levi Cooper Lane, a former President of Cooper Medical College. Lane Library was the largest medical library west of Chicago when Stanford University took over Cooper Medical College in 1908. In 1959, the library was relocated from San Francisco to the Stanford campus as part of the new School of Medicine buildings designed by Edward Durrell Stone. You can learn more about our history and the history of medicine through our Medical History Center.

Land Acknowledgment

Lane Library is situated in Palo Alto, within Santa Clara County. However, these are fairly recent political boundaries. The entire Bay Area, and the surrounding Northern California region, has played an integral part in the lives of Native people for thousands of years. It has been the ancestral home to Miwok, Pomo, Wappo, Ohlone, Patwin, and many other Native people with their own long histories of movement and interaction. In addition, the Spanish colonial missions and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs forced many thousands of other Native people from outside the Bay Area to relocate here; their descendants have remained for generations. As a result, the Bay Area has long been a rich and complex site of Native life. As a medical library, we recognize the substantial traditions and innovations in medical practice that have existed in Native communities across the Americas, including indigenous technologies for pain management, reproductive health, and other forms of care, as well as the ongoing role of the Stanford American Indigenous Medical Students organization here at Stanford Medicine.
Staircase in Lane Library with a blurred person walking up the stairs towards the information desk

Our Services

Our expert staff provides services to accelerate the research, education, and patient care of the Stanford Medicine community. Our services include:
Library entrance with door open and a library staff member welcoming the viewer to enter

Liaison Program

Our Liaison Program pairs departments, institutes, and student groups of Stanford University Medical Center with individual librarians who are familiar with the perspectives and knowledge of their assigned departments and specialties. We offer a variety of help, such as curriculum content management and expert research consultation. Contact your departmental library liaison for detailed information.

Find Your Liaison
Two people using library computers for research-related work

Research Services

Our Research and Instruction team provides a variety of education and research-related support to the Stanford Medicine community. Through collaboration, consultation, and training, the team provides expert assistance on topics related to medical education, evidence-based medicine, scholarly communications, research impact, and the management and sharing of research data.

Explore Resesarch Services
Research librarian providing instruction to a student with a laptop between then in the library consultation space

Regular and On-Demand Instruction

Our Research and Instruction team offers a wide variety of classes on research related topics including literature searching, reference management, data management, research impact, and more. Registration is free of charge to the Stanford Medicine community. We also offer on-demand classes and workshops for departments and programs.

Register for Classes & Events
view of bookshelf in the library

DocXpress Document Delivery Service

Our DocXpress Document Delivery Service connects the Stanford Medicine community to articles and books beyond our collections. Stanford Medicine affiliates can use this service to request PDFs of articles in journals we do not have access to, physical books that are not part of our collection, and scans of articles or book chapters that are only available in print through the library.

Learn More About DocXpress

Our Collections

Lane Library provides an extensive collection in clinical medicine, biomedicine, and public health.

22,000+
Periodical titles
370,000+
Volumes

80,000+ digital

Resources

13,500+
65,000+
400+

140,000+ Print

Titles

17,000+
Historical & archival works
130,000+
Print book titles

Search & Discovery Tools

We offer a variety of tools to access relevant materials anytime, anywhere:

  • Lane Search for articles, books, journals, databases, and other Lane website content
  • DocXpress Document Delivery Service for materials not available online or at Stanford
  • Guides to curate resources on specific subjects and research topics
  • A proxy service for off-campus access to restricted content
  • Smart searching including a link resolver for journal articles from PubMed and other databases
  • Browser extensions to add enhanced access to collections across PubMed, publisher websites, and the web
view of the D-CORE mural and book collection

Our Spaces

We provide study, computing, and community spaces designed to enable the work of the Stanford Medicine community.

Our library building includes:

Diversity Center of Representation and Empowerment (D-CORE)

The library ground-floor is also home to the Stanford School of Medicine’s Diversity Center of Representation and Empowerment (D-CORE). The D-CORE provides a space where any member of the Stanford Medicine community interested in issues of inclusion and diversity can hold meetings or just hang out and study. The space also includes a collection of both fiction and nonfiction books by and for Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC).

Student Spaces at Li Ka Shing (LKSC)

Study space is only open to medical students and biosciences graduate students on the fourth floor of the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge.

Stanford Medical History Center

The Stanford Medical History Center is also located in our library building. The center collects and maintains materials related to the history of health care, medical research, and medical education at Stanford and beyond. These materials are available for purposes of scholarship, genealogy, faculty and student recruitment and development, alumni relations, public relations, and curriculum development. Contact our curator to learn more.

Our Policies

Learn more about our library policies that must be adhered to while using our facilities, resources, and services. Our policies are designed to create a conducive and respectful space for our community, in both physical and digital spaces.

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