Recently, the University of Alabama joined the CDL under the supervision of Steven MacCall, an assistant professor there who helped establish the digital library as a UNT graduate student. The CDL also provides easily referenced breakdowns of diagnostic and treatment procedures in manageable bites so that participating physicians can quickly access what they need, says Ana D. Cleveland, the UNT professor of library and information sciences and graduate faculty member at the health science center who organized the site. Originally, the CDL was created to offer a medical resource for rural doctors across Texas, Cleveland explains. According to the Texas Department of Health, as of May 2000 there were 176 medically underserved counties in the state, most of them in rural areas. These are places where the distribution of doctors is grossly inadequate for the population.
Federal officials say the rural doctor shortage is a growing national problem.
According to Cleveland, the CDL provides a way to connect rural practitioners with the same quality of information that is available to their non-rural peers. The CDL was created in 1995 with a grant from the federal Health Resources Services Agency. Doctors like Dodson learn to use this resource while earning their degrees at the health science center and working in places like the Seminary Clinic so they're familiar with it when they go to rural counties, says Dr. Irvine Prather, director of the family practice residency in the health science center's Department of Family Medicine and a key writer of the grant. For Dodson, who plans to open her practice in a rural county, using the CDL is more comfortable than referencing a printed medical textbook. The site is organized for quick access, and each year a group of more than 30 UNT students constantly updates links in the digital collection, upgrading or deleting old sources.