Abstract
The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM), established as the Regional Medical Library Program in 1965, has a rich and remarkable history. The network’s first twenty years were documented in a detailed 1987 history by Alison Bunting, AHIP, FMLA. This article traces the major trends in the network’s development since then: reconceiving the Regional Medical Library staff as a “field force” for developing, marketing, and distributing a growing number of National Library of Medicine (NLM) products and services; subsequent expansion of outreach to health professionals who are unaffiliated with academic medical centers, particularly those in public health; the advent of the Internet during the 1990s, which brought the migration of NLM and NNLM resources and services to the World Wide Web, and a mandate to encourage and facilitate Internet connectivity in the network; and the further expansion of the NLM and NNLM mission to include providing consumer health resources to satisfy growing public demand. The concluding section discusses the many challenges that NNLM staff faced as they transformed the network from a system that served mainly academic medical researchers to a larger, denser organization that offers health information resources to everyone.
Highlights
The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM), established as the Regional Medical Library Program in 1965, has a rich and remarkable history
A careful review of these sources reveals how the network transformed itself during this time: growing, adapting, and evolving as information technology came of age and as both National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Regional Medical Library (RML), which originally focused on serving academically affiliated physicians, came to support a much larger, denser network of organizations offering health information resources to everyone
NLM and its RMLs were on the cusp of several major changes
Summary
An historical overview of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, 1985–2015. See end of article for author’s affiliation. Alison Bunting, AHIP, FMLA, ably documented the network’s first twenty years in her 1987 article, “The Nation’s Health Information Network: History of the Regional Medical Library Program, 1965–1985” [1]. The following historical overview traces the major trends in the network’s development between 1985 and 2015, drawing on three decades of primary and secondary sources These include the library periodical literature, RML directors’ meetings minutes, statements of work for successive five-year RML contracts, National Library of Medicine (NLM) annual reports, RML newsletters and blogs, and other materials, along with informal conversations with National Network Coordinating Office staff members. In the late 1980s, the RMLs helped NLM with two important research and evaluation projects, one that assessed MEDLINE available on CD-ROM and another investigating physicians’ use of MEDLINE for clinical problem solving [3, 4]
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