SALIS

News from SALIS

Celebrating Specialist Addictions Libraries

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Libraries Week at the SSA (Society for the Study of Addiction) written by SALIS member Christine Goodair and a colleague promotes the the value of special addictions collections and libraries.

Read about why addictions libraries, and libraries in general, are still valuable during this age of an abundance of information at our fingertips through the Internet. The authors make these distinctions:

  • The Internet is not a Library, and,
  • A Library is not the Internet.

And point out how public libraries have been responding to the COVID pandemic and, in the US, have also been providing support during the ongoing opioid crisis.

Many specialist addiction libraries have been downsized or closed since the 2000s. In the UK, the specialist libraries of DrugScope and Alcohol Concern were well known and well used. This has also been the trend in Europe, the US and Canada. However, some still exist and many belong to SALIS, a valuable network that continues to be strong and is coordinating building The SALIS Collection to preserve and make available core literature in the field.

The authors compiled a list of libraries and collections that still exist. May they continue to thrive!

The SALIS Collection Continues to Grow

by Barbara Weiner, Past Chair, SALIS

Now over 5,750 documents!

Even with COVID closures the last year and a half – including Internet Archive digitization stations – the SALIS Collection continued to grow!  I had the opportunity to digitally copy many documents from the Hazelden Betty Ford online addictions library catalog, into our SALIS Collection—SALIS’ freely online, full-text, e-lendng library of alcohol and drug documents.  This comprehensive literature resource collects alcohol and drug topics into one location, and preserves them for education, research, and the public good.

As organizational budgets and U.S. federal print budgets declined in the last 20-30 years, technology for digital documents advanced.  The Hazelden Betty Ford Library maximized its collection by adding full-text non-copyrighted or permission-given documents to its catalog.  This month, I completed the 2½ year-long task of adding those PDF documents to the Internet Archive (IA) SALIS Collection.

Documents uploaded into the SALIS Collection include self-help brochures and fact sheets, as well as the important TIP and TAP Series, NIDA and NIAAA Research Monographs, various newsletters, and Reports of the Surgeon General.

Hazelden Library joined SALIS in the early 1980s.   SALIS thanks Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation – and its current Librarian and SALIS member Ann Geht – for continuing to make its ever growing library catalog freely available. This sharing of full-text PDFs is a good example of the partnership of SALIS with Hazelden, and just one example of the many partnerships SALIS maintains with organizations and individuals. 

Visit the SALIS Collection to explore its 5750+ documents. 
Stay tuned. Coming this fall!
A Webinar to learn more about the SALIS Collection, its resources and how to effectively search through the IA interface.