United States National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine, operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its collections include more than seven million books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images on medicine and related sciences, including some of the world's oldest and rarest works.
, the acting director of the NLM was Stephen Sherry.
History
The precursor of the National Library of Medicine, established in 1836, was the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, a part of the office of the Surgeon General of [the United States Army]. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and its Medical Museum were founded in 1862 as the National [Museum of Health and Medicine|Army Medical Museum]. Throughout their history the Library of the Surgeon General's Office and the Army Medical Museum often shared quarters. From 1866 to 1887, they were housed in Ford's Theatre after production there was stopped, following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.In 1956, the library collection was transferred from the control of the U.S. Department of Defense to the Public Health Service of the United States [Department of Health and Human Services|Department of Health, Education, and Welfare] and renamed the National Library of Medicine, through the instrumentality of Frank Bradway Rogers, who was the director from 1956 to 1963. The library moved to its current quarters in Bethesda, Maryland, on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, in 1962.
Directors
Directors from 1945 to present| No. | Portrait | Director | Took office | Left office | |
| 1 | Leon Lloyd Gardner | 1945 | 1946 | ||
| 2 | Joseph Hamilton McNinch | 1946 | 1949 | ||
| 3 | Frank Bradway Rogers | 1949 | August 31, 1963 | ||
| 4 | Martin Marc Cummings | January 1, 1964 | September 30, 1984 | ||
| 5 | Donald A. B. Lindberg | October 11, 1984 | March 31, 2015 | ||
| acting | Betsy Humphreys | April 1, 2015 | September 11, 2016 | ||
| 6 | Patricia Flatley Brennan | September 12, 2016 | September 30, 2023 | ||
| acting | Stephen Sherry | October 1, 2023 | Present |
Publications and informational resources
Since 1879, the National Library of Medicine has published the Index Medicus, a monthly guide to articles, in nearly five thousand selected journals. The last issue of Index Medicus was printed in December 2004, but this information is offered in the freely accessible PubMed, among the more than fifteen million MEDLINE journal article references and abstracts going back to the 1960s and 1.5 million references going back to the 1950s.In 1986 Director Lindberg's Grateful Med project, named after the Grateful Dead band, facilitated direct access to the NLM MEDLINE database by making it significantly more affordable for all health professionals.
The National Library of Medicine runs the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which houses biological databases that are freely accessible on the Internet through the Entrez search engine and Lister Hill National Center For Biomedical Communications. As the United States National Release Center for SNOMED CT, NLM provides SNOMED CT data and resources to licensees of the NLM UMLS Metathesaurus. NLM maintains ClinicalTrials.gov registry for human interventional and observational studies. Additionally NLM runs ChemIDplus, which is a chemical database of over 400,000 chemicals complete with names, synonyms, and structures. It includes links to NLM and other databases and resources, including links to federal, state and international agencies.
Toxicology and environmental health
The Toxicology and Environmental Health Program was established at the National Library of Medicine in 1967 and is charged with developing computer databases compiled from the medical literature and from the files of governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The program has implemented several information systems for chemical emergency response and public education, such as the Toxicology Data Network, TOXMAP, Tox Town, Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders, Toxmystery, and the Household Products Database. These resources are accessible without charge on the internet.Radiation exposure
The United States National Library of Medicine Radiation Emergency Management System provides:- Guidance for health care providers, primarily physicians, about clinical diagnosis and treatment of radiation injury during radiological and nuclear emergencies
- Just-in-time, evidence-based, usable information with sufficient background and context to make complex issues understandable to those without formal radiation medicine expertise
- Web-based information that may be downloaded in advance, so that it would be available during an emergency if the Internet were not accessible