Building your professional library

When I started nursing school my class was told that our days of selling back books at the end of each quarter was over. They said, “save up your books, you will need them for reference, they will become part of your professional library once you graduate.”  There was also mention that you could write the cost of the books off as tax write-offs, though I am not sure if anyone quite figured out how to do that yet. But I digress. So we were told that our books were our books, and even if we wanted to sell them, the next class would more than likely use a different edition and so it would be a moot point.
Well, I am nearly finished with this program and foresee only having to buy maybe 2-3 more books in the next six month period. I took (and still take) pride in my professional library, which now, including clinical companions, work books, and ATI books, contains approximately 46 books on my shelf. Well, make that shelves, four shelves precisely. And while I have always been the girl whose favorite part in Beauty and the Beast was when Belle went to the Beast’s library because I wanted a room of books like that too, I’m starting to realize that that room is not in my near future (maybe after I start working for a few years I can expand and build my own!). In the mean time, there is concern for over crowding on my shelves and a lack of space for those non-nursing books I read once upon a time, before nursing took over.

When I look at the shelves, I do think it’s pretty awesome. I tackled all of those books, I think to myself. It’s a visual reminder of the distance I traveled. But on the other hand, since I was told selling them was out of the question, each book is filled with a muti-color array of highlighting works of art, my name on the edges of the papers. While there have been the essential reference books, the drug guide, my Lewis, et al. med-surge books, and for me, my Wong’s Essentials of Pediatrics book and clinical guide, there are some books that never measured up, like our Understanding Pathophysiology text, which managed to be longer than most, and somehow only contain a brief paragraph about anything that was essential to our class. There are definitely a few books that I won’t be using anymore, but it seems that their highlighted flaws and now-outdated editions will forever keep them a part of my own professional library.