The year 2011 marks the 175th anniversary of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health. Claimed to be the world's largest medical library and the producer of electronic information resources used by millions of people every day, NLM has changed the way scientific and medical information is organised, stored, accessed, and disseminated. From its founding in 1836, NLM's hallmark has been information innovation, leading to exciting scientific discoveries that ultimately improve the public health.
The Library has planned a number of special programmes in support of its mission. These include a disaster information outreach symposium, March 29-30 (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/disaster_info_symposium.html); a workshop on long-term preservation and management of electronic health records, April 6-7 (http://ddpehr.nist.gov/home.php); and a symposium on the future of clinical trials, June 6-7, among others.
NLM has made it easy to find and search the biomedical literature. The medical library established librarian training programmes and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine in the late 1960s to equalise access to the biomedical literature across the country. Now with nearly 6,000 members, NLM and this network of academic, hospital, and public libraries partner with community-based organisations to bring high-quality information services to health professionals and the public.
NLM began intensive development of Web health information services for the general public in 1998 with the release of MedlinePlus.gov. Now available in English and Spanish, MedlinePlus is one of many NLM consumer health information products also available on mobile devices such as smartphones. In 2000, it released ClinicalTrials.gov, which now claims to be the world's largest source of information about clinical trials recruiting for patients and healthy volunteers, and also provides summary results of some trials long before they appear in the published literature.
NLM has a state-of-the-art data center, to ensure uninterrupted access to essential information services that are accessed billions of times each year. This center has maximised the utilisation of available computing resources by introducing centralised shared data storage, energy efficiency initiatives, and the establishment of an offsite redundant data center for disaster recovery. More details on NLM's history, its programmes and services, and its anniversary year calendar, is available online at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/175.
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