United States National Library off Medicine

The United States National Library off Medicine (of the English meaning “National library medicine of the the United States”), known under the Initials NLM , is a Bibliothèque specialized in Médecine and in sciences and technology associated. It is attached to the National Institutes off Health (National institute of Health) and is thus installed with Bethesda, in the Maryland, not far from Washington.

History of the NLM

The NLM a long time depended on the armed . It was created in 1836 under the name of Library off the Army Surgeon General' S Office (library of the general surgeon). It became a little later the Army Medical Library (medical library of the army).

It then amalgamated with the Army Medical Museum .

In 1956, it was transferred to the civil capacity and was attached to the National Institutes off Health . It then took its current name.

Collections

With its seven million documents, the NLM is largest medical Bibliothèque of the world. It contains many books and periodic S (re-examined), but also of the Manuscrit S, gray Littérature, Image S and charts and plans. Its funds old makes of it a library of reference in Histoire of medicine. The NLM digitized and put on line part of this funds.

International role

The NLM is especially famous, apart from the United States, by its activities with international character, of which profit from other libraries of the same type as well as the doctors, pharmacists, health professionals, researchers and students.

In the field of the information sciences

The NLM created, on the model of the Classification of the Library of the Congress, a specific Classification, the Classification NLM, used by the majority of the medical libraries, like the French college libraries.

In the same way, for the professionals of documentation, the NLM is at the origin of the system MeSH ( Medical Subject Headings ). MeSH is used for the Indexation documents in the libraries, but it is also used in the databases such as Medline (see below)

For research in medicine

As a large part of the Medical research is published in the form of articles, the NLM created tools announcing the contents of the reviews. The NLM thus published, starting from 1879, the Index Medicus , which gave the synopsis of the great American medical checks. Thereafter, the service was packed and internationalized (even if the cover of the Anglo-Saxon world is more complete than that of the other countries). With the development of new technologies, this bibliographical review, starting from 1971, supplemented then was replaced by the database MEDLINE. Since 1997, this database is from now on accessible freely by the Entrez engine, under the name of PubMed (contraction of Public and Medline).

The NLM directs also the project Visible Human Project .

See too

External bonds

Official site of the NLM
Concerning MeSH

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