Medical Assisting Site Visit

Parkland College Library’s total budget for books and audiovisual materials is $90,000.  The Library gladly accepts faculty requests for materials in support of the Medical Assisting program. We use a Gobi selection profile service to notify us about new publications, and utilize other reviewing tools such as Choice and Library Journal to determine what materials to purchase.

The library holds approximately 85,000 physical items. Approximately 76,000 books, with the remainder being DVDs, CDs and other audiovisual materials. Magazines and journals are not included in this number.

We provide access to thousands more magazines, journals, and video titles through subscriptions to electronic databases. We provide access to over 100,000 eBook titles.

Access to streaming video includes Swank, Kanopy, Films on Demand, ICE Video Library (International Clinical Educators) and Alexander Street Press’ Nursing Education in Video collection.

Medical Assistant Holdings: We do attempt to collect material related to Medical Assisting. We find our options spare, however. Relatively few materials are assigned “Medical Assistants” as a keyword or subject heading. However, we have many more materials related to the course work in the program, see links below.

For a list of books and ebooks, see

• Medical Assistants
• Medical Terminology
• Pharmacology
• Medical Records & Coding

Periodical Subscriptions

•  CMA Today
• Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine

The Library subscribes to CINAHL Complete as our primary access to journals for students in health professions programs.

Additionally, we have access to ScienceDirect from Elsevier. It comes with a great deal of full text, but we also have funds on deposit in a "Transactional Access" account for immediate access to materials that are not part of our regular subscription.

These two databases provide a multitude of articles on anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and other relevant medical topics for the Medical Assisting program.

For the duration of the COVID-19 situation, the capacity of the library will be reduced in accordance with Illinois governmental mandates.

The library seats 352. There is dedicated silent study space on the third floor, while the second houses ample spaces for group work and collaboration.

We have two group study rooms and two study booths, which may be reserved. These are equipped with whiteboards, Wi-Fi, and large monitors with sreensharing tools.

We provide ample computer facilities, including an instructional classroom, where we are able to work with classes to demonstrate and develop research strategies for specific courses and assignments. This classroom serves as a computer lab when not scheduled for a specific class.

Other equipment includes audiovisual materials viewing, scanning and photocopying, printing, faxing, microfilm reader/printers, and assistive technology for students with visual impairments.

We have an array of loanable technologies for checkout, including laptops, Chromebooks, iPads, and various charging and data storage devices. More info available at https://library.parkland.edu/loanabletechnology 

Our collection development policy is at https://library.parkland.edu/c.php?g=88300&p=569360. This includes weeding criteria

The library does not have a collection funding matrix limiting expenditures for specific programs or departments. Rather, liaison librarians are given the task of maintaining adequate collections.