Partnerships: The Edward L. Pratt Library

Established in 1931, the Edward L. Pratt Library has a long history of supporting the research and teaching needs of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC). Located in the Sabin Educational Center on Burnet Avenue, the Library houses a dynamic research collection of over 7,500 books and access to thousands of journal titles. While subject emphasis changes with research needs, the current collections are particularly strong in clinical pediatrics, developmental research, and genetics.

The Library has been in its present location since 2000 and boasts three reading rooms with comfortable, upholstered chairs and large tables. Etchings and watercolors adorn the walls of the facility created by Dr. Josef Warkany, who did his groundbreaking work in teratology (the biological study of birth defects) at CCHMC from the 1930s until his death in the 1980s. Dr. Warkany is also featured in a collection of video interviews that cover a range of notable CCHMC personalities including Albert Sabin, Edward Pratt, Samuel Kaplan, Joseph Rauh, and others. These videos, the brainchild of Dr. William Gerhardt CCHMC’s unofficial historian, are made available at the Pratt Library.

While the Pratt Library’s primary mission is to provide services and research materials to the physicians and staff of CCHMC, the collections of the Library are available to a wider audience through their partnership with UC’s libraries. University Libraries, in collaboration with UC’s Health Sciences Libraries, provides CCHMC staff with full access to OhioLINK resources and the collections of the 85 members of OhioLINK as well as those of all UC libraries. The Pratt Library reciprocates by providing no-charge interlibrary lending to other OhioLINK institutions.

To find out more about the Edward L. Pratt Library, visit their Web site at
<www.cincinnatichildrens.org/research/pratt/>.

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