Countway Library of Medicine

Great library, or greatest library?
I’m not going to say greatest, because it’s not 24 hours, but this place is pretty damn close. Located in the Longwood area next to all the major hospitals, this place has every medical journal you could ever want. looking for that obscure Thai journal (printed in Thai) from 1971? Yeah, it’s downstairs.
The public is free to see the museum during regular business hours, but photography is not permitted. Access to the library is given to anyone with a hospital ID and most school IDs (but call ahead to confirm because certain schools are not permitted).
Let me give you the quick run down on this place. The library is broken down into 7 floors: The top floor (5^th floor – you’ll see why) is mostly conference rooms. Of note there is a «museum» on the 5^th floor that has all manner of medical oddities, including the skull of Phineas Gage. The fourth floor is mostly lab space used by Harvard, so you won’t be getting in there without an ID. The third floor has a portion of the book collections in addition to massive amounts of study space for groups and solo. I happen to prefer the Hollywood Squares study rooms that overlook the atrium. Second floor has more group study space and the reference librarians who can answer pretty much any question you have concerning libraries – really useful when you want to figure out how to cite a source that no one has ever cited. First floor has the quite study room and the current journals, great if you like dead silence. L1 has the second half of the book collection and the consumer health and black studies collections. L2 has the journals from before time was time and the history of medicine/​rare book archives where you can pretend to be Indiana Jones. I hear they also have a shrunken head.
Cooper, the therapy shih tzu, can be seen hanging around the front desk on Tuesdays and Thursdays.