For this month’s Specialty Profile, we’re highlighting the first issue in our second volume of Doody’s Special Topics Lists, the latest free feature for Doody’s Core Titles and Doody’s Review Service subscribers.  

On October 1, we published the latest Doody’s Special Topics List focused on vaccinations. After completing work on our last list focusing on health literacy, it became clear that there was a need to examine vaccination-related titles more closely. Once again, the COVID-19 pandemic provides fertile ground for understanding the importance of such a book list. The ongoing deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine and subsequent booster creates an ongoing need for librarians to respond to a diverse array of vaccination information needs. In the same way clinicians and researchers need to maintain expertise in how vaccines are developed and affect patient health outcomes, so too do general health consumers need to educate themselves on the history and science of vaccines so they can make informed decisions for their health. 

Thus, our Doody’s Special Topics List engages vaccination literature from a variety of perspectives: clinician, researcher, and consumer, among others. An interdisciplinary approach to vaccine development and medicine involves clinical specialties such as clinical immunology, infectious diseases, pediatrics, family medicine, primary care, patient education, and public health as well as scientific fields such as microbiology, vaccinology, and immunology. Importantly, consumer health books help distill important vaccine-related topics such as history, ethics, development, and hesitancy into accessible resources for the general population to understand. Additional considerations are made for vaccinations across the life course as well as within special health populations. It is important to note that this list does not include books related specifically to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine. 

Selected by experienced librarians with backgrounds in collecting and promoting vaccination-related resources, the list is comprised of 48 titles from 22 publishers. The list prices of the titles range from $16.95 to $359.99, the average being $125.92. Six of the titles were selected for Doody’s Core Titles 2021, two of which are Essential Purchase Titles. Thirteen of the titles have been reviewed by experts in Doody’s Review Service and the copyright dates range from 2011 to 2022.  

If you’re a Doody’s Review Service subscriber, you can access the list by clicking here and logging in to your account. If you’re a Doody’s Core Titles customer, you can access the list by clicking here and logging into your account. You may also be able to access the list through one of our licensing partners: EBSCO, Rittenhouse, Matthews, Ovid, and Login Canada. If you’re not sure how you can get access, please contact Customer Service and we’ll gladly assist you. We are excited to begin work on the second issue of this volume of Doody’s Special Topics Lists, which will publish in January 2022 and take a deep dive into rural health.