Handbooks and manuals that summarize and document procedures and standard practices are important not only for current clinical practice, but also for historical documentation of the practice of medicine and delivery of health care of an era. The Library collects handbooks and manuals likely to be of interest to U.S. health professionals. Much of the literature is targeted to practitioners and is purely of local interest. Hence the Library generally collects only those international resources likely to be of historical interest, for example, those that depict culturally or geographically diverse practices and procedures.