Medical Research Libraries for ASD and Related Disorders

In my travels, I often meet parents looking for the latest treatment breakthroughs for autism and autism-related disorders, OCD and Tourette’s. That is the trifecta in my son’s case. Autism often comes with a variety of “comorbid” or accompanying disorders, which makes the whole thing trickier. As we all know, autism is a “spectrum disorder,” which really really means, to be honest, no one knows that much about it, there might be many causes for it and specialists are hard to find. Many of us have traveled out of the city or even out of state to get help.

To this end, I want to let people know about a fantastic resource in Houston they might not know about: The Texas Medical Center Library.

If you go to the TMC Library’s home page and conduct searches there, you will be able to pull up all kinds of scholarly articles on specific conditions which you will not find merely by Googling. In my case, I tend to search “OCD and autism” to see what’s new.

Granted, you will not be able to access the full text of many of these books and articles without credentials (an institutionally-issued sign on) or a willingness to pay about $50 per article to get you through a paywall. But with many articles, you can get to full text if the article is designated Open Access (look for the orange open lock icon). Through Google Scholar, you can also often find reprints of the same article in open access institutional repositories. I have often had good luck emailing the author and requesting the article, or getting it through ResearchGate.

If you want to take your research to the next level, and you have time during a work week to actually go down to the medical center, you can also go inside the TMC Library and get guest credentials to access full text of all of these articles. I think the TMC Library is an underutilized resource which more parents of special needs kids should know about, even though it isn’t a “public” library (they say they are an independent library).

If you live more toward Galveston, there is a UT medical research library which is also very good, UTMB’s Moody Medical Library. Like the TMC Library, you can search in their search box to see if there are articles there which would make the trip down there worth your while. Inside the library, you should be able to access full-text of everything. The UTMB Library is open to unaffiliated researchers both during the week and on the weekends both, where the TMC Library is only accessible to non-affiliated researchers during the week. Parking is also difficult and costly at the TMC Library, so I would opt for the Moody Library just for the convenience factor.

Occasionally, I will explore publications to see if there is an expert I might consult with now or in the future, a systematic review or a clinical trial. If you go to the library itself, there may be additional resources which are not well indexed by the library’s discovery tool. Ask a Librarian for assistance.