The National Library of Medicine and Drug Information. Part 1: Present Resources
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The National Library of Medicine and Drug Information. Part 1:Present Resources* James E. Knoben, PhamD, MPH Director. Drug Information Officer. Special Assistant to the Associate Director. Specialized Information
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Former Assistant Director for Research and Education
M~k%%c&%?~ Deputy Associate Director Specialized Information Services National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Bethesda. Maryland
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Key Words Drug information;National Library of Medicine; Internet Correspondence Address James E. Knoben, PharmD. M P H . National Library of Medicine, 6707 Democracy Blvd.. Suite 510, Bethesda, MD 20892-5467 (e-mail: [email protected]. nih.gov). '"The National Library of Medicine and Drug Information. Part 2: A n Evolving Future" will be published in the next issue of the Drug Information Journal.
The National Library of Medicine began in 1836 as a small collection of books in the office of the Army Surgeon General. Today, the National Library of Medicine is the world's largest medical library, providing access to its vast collection of seven million items onsite and through the World Wide Web. Historical interest in drug information dates to 1967, when Congress provided finds for a Drug Literature Program at the National Library of Medicine. Drug information is now dispersed among a number of National Library of Medicine bibliographic and factual databases that offer an away of clinical, research, and toxicological drug data. Target audiences for drug
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information include consumers, patients, healthcare practitioners, clinical researchers, and scientists. Drug development and medical publishing have both accelerated to such an extent that it is virtually impossiblefor healthcare practitioners and researchers to keep apprised of cuwent information. Due to wide utilization for posting medically-related data, the Internet is discussed in terms of its impact on medical library responsibilities, the need to preserve clinical and scientific information in the public domain, and how such imperatives indicate a need to create new drug-related databases, including an Internet portal to drug information.
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INTRODUCTION The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world's largest medical library, is a leader in the selection, acquisition, organization, and provision of medically-related literature and data. The NLM is perhaps best known for its bibliographic database MEDLINE. In addition, it offers a vast collection of bibliographic and factual databases, an array of historical, audiovisual, and print materials and, organizationally, includes two biomedicalhiotechnology information research centers. Its collections are freely available to users onsite (eg, print and audiovisual materials), or accessible on a global scale through the Internet. Users do not need to register to access the NLM's electronic databases. The NLM has evolved somewhat unevenly over the past 40 years in terms of its focus on drug information. In the mid- 1960s a Drug Literature Program was created at t
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