North Carolina is divided into nine regions with an Area Health Education Center (AHEC) in each region. Each AHEC includes library and information services to support the clinical, educational, and research activities of regional health professionals and students. These regional AHEC libraries make up the NC AHEC Information & Library System. As a core service of the NC AHEC Program, the libraries have a mission to meet the state's health and health work force needs by providing community-based, customer-driven access to authoritative and current health information.
AHEC Libraries are staffed by masters-level trained librarians and information professionals who have specialized training in providing health sciences information to individual health professionals, hospitals and other institutions. The AHEC Libraries provide an array of services including access to electronic and print information resources; general and customized educational sessions; article and document delivery; and customized searches of the medical literature. The NC AHEC Library & Information System also offers a statewide portal of electronic information resources-the AHEC Digital Library.
NC AHEC Librarians impact health care providers in North Carolina in many ways. In 2007-2008 library staff made over 542 outreach visits to hospitals, clinics, and health agencies and delivered 5406 consultations. AHEC Librarians provided information support to more than 2000 preceptors of health sciences students from NC schools. They supported the medical education programs at Carolinas Medical Center, Moses Cone Health System, New Hanover Regional Medical Center, WakeMED Hospitals, Mission Hospitals and several other hospital and non-hospital based medical residency programs. The AHEC Digital Library (ADL) provided consortium purchases and access to electronic journals, textbooks and databases for more than 30 NC hospitals that employ over 60,000 staff members.
Our vision is to be your first choice for quality health information.
