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Abstract
The paper is an expanded version of the 2007 Joseph Leiter National Library of Medicine (NLM)/Medical Library Association Lecture presented at MLA '07, the Medical Library Association annual meeting in Philadelphia in May 2007. It presents an historical accounting of four major pieces of legislation, beginning with the NLM Act of 1956 up through the creation of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. The transition from the United States Armed Forces Medical Library to the United States National Library of Medicine in 1956 was a major turning point in NLM's history, scope, and direction. The succeeding landmark legislative achievements--namely, the 1965 Medical Library Assistance Act, the 1968 Joint Resolution forming the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, and the 1988 authorization for the National Center for Biotechnology Information--transformed the library into a major biomedical communications institution and a leader and supporter of an effective national network of libraries of medicine. The leaders of the library and its major advocates--including Dr. Michael DeBakey, Senator Lister Hill, and Senator Claude Pepper-together contributed to the creation of the modern NLM.
Highlights
American citizens, for whom the health of their loved ones is always of primary concern, can take great pride in their National Library of Medicine [NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE (NLM)], which takes life-giving knowledge from research, organizes it, and transmits it to those who can best use it to fight disease and disability and to improve the quality of life for all of us.These words, expressed at the time of NLM’s sesquicentennial President Ronald Reagan, attest to the integral part the library has played in fostering the nation’s biomedical research and public health agenda
Frederick Kilgour, librarian of the Yale Medical Library, delivered a resolution on behalf of the Medical Library Association and testified as to the naivete of the Chicago group’s ‘‘concept of a library being only an organization for servicing readers and mailing out books and photocopies’’ [27]. He emphasized that the bill envisioned a library concerned with ‘‘an over-all program for maintaining and increasing the availability of medical information throughout the government and the nation.’’ He pointed out these programs needed to be integrated with other national health programs located in the Washington area and powerfully stated that ‘‘a dollar spent on a national library of medicine would contribute more to the national health than a dollar spent on any other type of medical activity . . . But to go on and waste money on a move that could be better spent on an important natural resource would be tragic’’ [28]
Some 9 months after Senator Hill proposed the Medical Library Assistance Act (MLAA) legislation, it was signed into law by President Johnson on October 22, 1965, and along with its groundbreaking provisions was an authorization for 5 years at $105 million
Summary
For whom the health of their loved ones is always of primary concern, can take great pride in their National Library of Medicine [NLM], which takes life-giving knowledge from research, organizes it, and transmits it to those who can best use it to fight disease and disability and to improve the quality of life for all of us. Frederick Kilgour, librarian of the Yale Medical Library, delivered a resolution on behalf of the Medical Library Association and testified as to the naivete of the Chicago group’s ‘‘concept of a library being only an organization for servicing readers and mailing out books and photocopies’’ [27] He emphasized that the bill envisioned a library concerned with ‘‘an over-all program for maintaining and increasing the availability of medical information throughout the government and the nation.’’ He pointed out these programs needed to be integrated with other national health programs located in the Washington area and powerfully stated that ‘‘a dollar spent on a national library of medicine would contribute more to the national health than a dollar spent on any other type of medical activity . While creating the 1956 act was a long and laborious struggle, the two major NLM pieces of legislation came somewhat easier, hardly a ‘‘slam dunk,’’ for they arose as the lush times for medical research were reaching their peak
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