2017 Charleston Library Conference

For students in anatomy and physiology courses, access to models of different systems and structures is an essential key to learning. When you’re dealing with complicated, interconnected, extremely detailed and visually difficult material, having a physical object that you can hold and turn in your hand dramatically reduces the barriers to comprehension and learning. Plastic models of organs as well as of entire skeletal, muscular, circulatory, and nervous systems, have long been key tools in promoting student success. They are also composed of many small pieces, they are relatively expensive, and they are super cool. So they are justifiably kept under close guard, and typically remain locked in the lab that paid for them, accessible only to a lucky credentialed few. But libraries are all about democratization of access, and we also know that sometimes students just want to study at night when the lab where they would normally work is closed and locked up tight. So the NCSU Libraries started small and added a few skeletons to our collection. Now we’ve got a whole conga line and multiple different models.

This poster will discuss the NCSU Libraries experiences lending anatomical models - highlighting our policies, challenges, and successes. The growth of our collection has been managed in close consultation with instructors of human physiology and anatomy courses in response to course-specific needs, and has seen some interesting use patterns, which will also be discussed.