You are right. NYPL is about the best public library one could hope for and much is available from home login. City College is one option to look at but I don't think they have a medical library. I am an NYU alum and had extensive conversations with the alumni office and library and both confirmed that access to med school library resources was a non-starter. I guess its a big issue for me because people need information to make informed healthcare decisions and so much medical research has a component of public funding. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Sometimes 'alumni access' (that you can use from anywhere with alumni credentials) is less than the total online licensed resource access for current students/faculty -- because the university generally needs to pay extra for "alumni access" to particular licensed resources.
But sometimes the total licensed resource access is available for _on-site_ public users, even if not alumni, because that may be included in the licenses.
I know you can't enter the medical library, but have you checked if you can get access to the resources you need on-site at another NYU library, that may allow the public to walk-in and use licensed resources from on-site workstations?
There may be resources licensed only to the medical library you can't get access to there -- but there may not be. Sometimes the particular people you are talking to asking questions don't understand the total licensing landscape of the university, especially if you are talking to people at the alumni office rather than librarians (but even every librarian may not, if you're not talking to someone whose job is centered on online resources; it gets terribly complicated, and libraries haven't always been great at keeping track of it and keeping it sane; the vendors' demands and irrational and enormously expensive contracts don't really help).
Have you tried accessing the publications via the on-campus computers in the normal undergraduate libraries? I don't think you need to be in a medical building to have access to the online medical journals.
