U.S National Library of Medicine : an overview

BySangeeta Narang

All India Institute of Medial ScienceNew Delhi

The slides cover :

Screenshot of NLM History of NLM NLM databases-

MEDLINE PubMed PubMed Central

References

National Library of Medicine (NLM)

It is the world’s largest Medical Library located in Bethesda, United States

Founded in 1836 at the office of the Surgeon General of the Army Washington, District of Columbia

In 1840 the office issued its "first catalogue of books in the library.“

In 1867-1895 John Shaw Billings, the first director of the Library of the Office of the Surgeon General of the US Army

In 1870 Inter-Library Loan service was startedContd.

National Library of Medicine (NLM)

In 1879 first volume of Index Medicus was published . The

print publication ceased after 2004

In 1880 first volume of the Index-Catalogue published

In 1922-The Library of the Office of the Surgeon General

(Army) is renamed the Army Medical Library and in 1952-The

Army Medical Library is renamed the Armed Forces Medical

Library.

In 1956- The Armed Forces Medical Library becomes the

National Library of Medicine(Contd.)

National Library of Medicine (NLM)

1st edition of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) was

released in 1960

NLM shifted to Rockville Pikeon the National Institutes

of Health campus, Bethesda, Maryland in 1962

MEDLARS became Operational January 1963

Present Director is Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., a

scientist who has pioneered in applying computer

technology to health care

MEDLINEIt is the National Library of Medicine (NLM) journal

citation database. MEDLINE database is searchable from

NLM as a subset of database.

Started in 1960s, it crosses over 20 million references to

biomedical and life science journals articles back to 1946.

MEDLINE includes citations from approx. 5600 scholarly

journals published around the world

It is LSTRC which reviews and recommends journals to be

included in MEDLINE

PubMedPubMed has been available since 1996 free of charge on

the World Wide Web.

It covers over 22 million references including the

MEDLINE database. It also includes

• In-process citation

• ‘Ahead of print’ citations

• Citations to author manuscripts

• Citations to boos available on NCBI bookshelf

It provide links to full text article on the publishers’

websites &/or links to PMC and the bookshelf

PubMed Central (PMC)

• It was launched in 2000 as a free archive for full-text

biomedical and life sciences journal articles

• It serves as digital counterpart to the NLM extensive

print journal collection

• It is a repository of journal literature that have been

submitted in compliance with NIH Public Access Policy

by participating publishers/authors

References

• National Library of Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/

• National Library of Medicine Milestones 1836-2011 Available at :http://apps.nlm.nih.gov/175/milestones.cfm

• MEDLINE, PubMed and PMC (PubMed Central): How are they different? Available at : http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dif_med_pub.html

Further reading :• Dee, Cheryl Rae The development of the Medical Literature Analysis and

Retrieval System (MEDLARS)*J Med Libr Assoc. Oct 2007; 95(4): 416–425.• Available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2000779/

• NLM electronic resources. Available at : http://wwwcf2.nlm.nih.gov/nlm_eresources/eresources/search_database.cfm

Thank you