The hospital library is crucial to quality healthcare.

In a 1988 report, an advisory committee of the Medical Library Association (MLA) wrote that "no one would argue against information as the foundation for efficient cost-effective business or against access to knowledge as a prerequisite for developing new knowledge." Yet the increasing number of threats to the hospital library--largely from within the industry--suggest that many hospitals do not value information in the same way their counterparts in other businesses do. In the first of two articles in this issue on hospital library and information services, the executive director of the MLA uses the MLA's experience and a variety of research findings to restate the case for the hospital library's vital role in quality care.