Max Brown Family Resource Library in the Spotlight!

The Max Brown Family Resource Library services the families, patients, and visitors of Scottish Rite Hospital, part of the award winning Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hospitals. The library is centrally located on the first floor of the hospital, and visitors easily see its collections, materials, reading exhibits, and smiling volunteers and staff members through the inviting glass walls that make up the front of the library.

The primary purpose of the Max Brown Family Resource Library is to provide understandable and reputable medical information to the patients and families regarding the conditions that bring them to the hospital. During times of stress and anxiety that often come with hospital stays, the library staff caringly work to provide sound medical information to the families so they can have the vocabulary to converse with clinicians and can feel empowered to participate in health care decisions.

To fulfill the library’s mission of enhancing the lives of children by empowering families through knowledge, the library provides a print and electronic medical collection, which reflect areas of patient care available at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Additionally, the library provides hundreds of children’s, teen, and adult books, a significant DVD collection, computers and tablets for parents and children, magazines, and games to help entertain the families and pass the time during their hospital stay. The library also has a variety of anatomical models and posters, often used by hospital staff to explain complex medical procedures to the patients, and the library is occasionally used by hospital staff as an engaging place to hold informational meetings for children and parents.

Besides the collections, the library provides great programming for the children, with story times led by library volunteers, “Reading to Rover” and therapy dog visits in the library, and Legos in the Library, where patients can come build a Lego set thanks to “Little Bricks of Hope.”

The library is staffed by a Family Library Coordinator, several library assistants who have library science or medical degrees, and by a wonderful team of volunteers.

To find out more about the Max Brown Family Resource Library, please visit: http://scottishrite.mysurpass.net