Throughout my surgical career, I have loved collecting books and holding onto them. Books are meaningful and serve as opportunities to remember and reflect on the various facets of my educational, private practice and academic surgical careers. Journals, too, found a way onto my bookshelves and served as reference material and educational updates way before Google and other internet search engines appeared. How many of you remember poring through Index Medicus searching for that important reference? I was always ecstatic when I found it in that journal on my bookshelf. Fortunately, that method of searching for references is in our rearview mirror!
My problem has been an inability to dispose of a journal once I had perused it. For many journals, every printed copy was precious and, in my mind, would serve as a helpful reference if I ever needed it. I had begun receiving The New England Journal of Medicine as a second-year medical student, and for the next several decades, I kept every weekly edition and dutifully had each volume bound and imprinted with my initials. Eventually, I realized this was not healthy and would lead to my being a selectee on the television show dealing with hoarders!
Once I stepped away from my clinical practice, I realized that the monographs and journals that I had amassed over years might need a different home. My wife felt the same way! Fortunately, my hospital library was willing to accept my bound journal collections. I found several websites that would serve as repositories for scientific books in order to supply medical libraries in economically challenged countries. One of my other giving opportunities came in the form of our surgical residents who appreciated having a surgical textbook, even though their primary reference sources were online monographs and UpToDate. Giving books to surgical residents is such a joy for me and hopefully has been as meaningful to them.
I am also fairly certain that future generations of surgeons will not have the same angst over their books and journals as I have had; there will be no printed medical books and journals! Many of our medical and surgical journals have already gravitated entirely away from the print model in favor of online publications. The latest example, the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, using a new publisher, will be circulated entirely electronically beginning this month. I suspect many more journals will follow suit. Regarding monographs, our surgical residents and clinical surgeons will most likely only subscribe to e-books capable of downloading to their favorite technology platform. There will be very little incentive for the expense of printing and mailing traditional texts.
So, as I continue to downsize my printed volumes, it is with a sense of nostalgia, but also a realization that the publishing world has changed. Perhaps even bookshelves will become anachronistic! Just as we all have experienced over the last two years, we can exist in a virtual world! Even General Surgery News is available in a virtual format, but I do look forward to receiving my print edition of GSN and enjoy cradling it in my hands each month. I hope the opportunity for that experience never goes away!
Happy 2022 to you and your families.
Dr. Greene is a surgeon in Charlotte, NC.
This article is from the January 2022 print issue.
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