Nicholas K. Birech
March, 2006
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), is located on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and it is the world's largest medical library. The Library collects materials in all areas of biomedicine and health care, as well as works on biomedical aspects of technology, the humanities, and the physical, life, and social sciences. The collections stand at more than 7 million items--books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs and images. Housed within the Library is one of the world's finest medical history collections of old and rare medical works. NLM is a national resource for all U.S. health science libraries through a National Network of Libraries of Medicine.
Services and Products of National Library of Medicine
MedlinePlus is the National Library of Medicine's web site for consumer health information. It features:
Over 700 health topics
A medical encyclopedia with images
Drug information - Hospitals and physicians
Latest health news
Interactive Health Tutorials
Directory
Other resources: - Organizations, libraries, databases, Medline
The website ClinicalTrials.gov provides patients, family members, health care professionals, and members of the public easy access to information on clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), through its National Library of Medicine (NLM), has developed this site in collaboration with all NIH Institutes and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Provides the public information about clinical trials and opportunities to participate in the evaluation of new treatments and drugs.
A Web site designed to meet the needs of older adults. Seniors and caregivers can find information on selected topics in an easy-to-read format.
An interactive guide about how the environment, chemicals and toxic substances affect human health. Tox Town helps users explore a Town, City, Farm, or US-Mexico Border community to identify common environmental hazards. It is designed to provide:
Facts on everyday locations where toxic chemicals might be found
Information about how the environment can affect human health
Non-technical descriptions of chemicals
Links to authoritative chemical information on the Internet
Internet resources on environmental health topics.
Information on the health effects of common household products under your sink, in the garage, in the bathroom and on the laundry room shelf.
Information about genetic conditions and the genes responsible for those conditions. Includes descriptions of the symptoms, diagnostic process, and treatment options.
MEDLINE® (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is the U.S. National Library of Medicine's (NLM) premier bibliographic database that contains approximately 13 million references to 4600 biomedical journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. Many of these references link to abstracts and in some cases, the full text of articles.
Provides free access to MEDLINE,
Links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.
Provides a Clinical Queries search filters page.
Links to related articles for a selected citation.
Includes automatic e-mailing of search updates and filters for search results using "My NCBI".
Includes a spell checker feature.
Links to NCBI sequence and other molecular biology databases.
New citations are usually added to PubMed Tuesday through Saturday.
Provide access to OLDMEDLINE for pre-1966 citations.
Citations to articles that are out-of-scope (e.g., covering plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and general chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed for MEDLINE.
In-process citations which provide a record for an article before it is indexed with MeSH® and added to MEDLINE or converted to out-of-scope status.
Citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing (when supplied electronically by the publisher).
Some life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral® and may not have been recommended for inclusion in MEDLINE although they have undergone a review by NLM, and some physics journals that were part of a prototype PubMed in the early to mid-1990's.
A central resource for current information on clinical trials for AIDS patients, federally approved HIV treatment and prevention guidelines.
The Surgeon General of the United States is the nation's leading spokesman on matters of public health.
NLM
Catalog: start here to find books, journals, and audiovisuals
LocatorPlus: for holdings, item
availability, MARC 21, and more
Online version of the
Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office.
Librarians help locate resources in
the biomedical sciences, and answer questions about NLM's products and
services.
Libraries may borrow books or obtain copies of articles from NLM. Individuals who need to borrow library materials should make a request through a local library.
MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity. The subject vocabulary is used for indexing and cataloging.
MeSH descriptors are arranged in both an alphabetic and a hierarchical structure. There are 22,997 descriptors in MeSH. In addition to these headings, there are more than 151,000 headings called Supplementary Concept Records (formerly Supplementary Chemical Records) within a separate thesaurus. There are also thousands of cross-references that assist in finding the most appropriate MeSH Heading.
NLM catalogs biomedical materials in more than 45 languages and provides bibliographic services to the biomedical library community. NLM Classification used to organize library materials
The policies and guidelines for building NLM’s collection are described in the Collection Development Manual of the National Library of Medicine. The Manual is reviewed and updated periodically to reflect emerging changes in health care and advances in medical research.
In response to its mandate to preserve the biomedical literature, the National Library of Medicine has developed an extensive preservation program. Elements of the program include:
Microfilming serials and monographs on brittle paper
Library binding
Conservation and book repair
Preserving audiovisuals
Preserving digital formats
Disaster prevention and recovery
Permanent paper campaign
Reports, plans, newsletters,
bibliographies and other staff publications.
Provides training, document delivery and other useful resources for the health and information professionals in developing countries/international community
The National Library of Medicine houses one of the world's largest history of medicine collections. It collects, preserves, and make available to researchers and the public, print and non-print materials that document the history of medicine, health, and disease in all time periods and cultures.
The Exhibition Program of the National Library of Medicine presents lively and informative exhibitions that enhance the public and scholarly awareness and appreciation of the National Library of Medicine’s collections. The Program conducts scholarly research in science, medicine, and history; interprets that research for presentation to diverse audiences; designs and develops engaging displays; and produces educational outreach programs.
The Exhibition Program promotes public education about science, medicine, and history through its creation of interactive exhibitions, multimedia displays, traveling exhibitions, web sites, symposia, films, lectures, and publications. The Program expands the local community’s knowledge about the Library’s collections though outreach to community groups, senior centers, schools, universities, and professional groups. The Exhibition Program manages a robust tour program for Library visitors, which features special presentations by National Institutes of Health scientists and other Library programs.
References and links
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/index.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nno/nnlmlist2.html
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/index.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/onlineexhibitions.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/publications.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/psd/pcm/pcm.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/briefhistory.html