United States National Library of Medicine

United States
National Library of Medicine
Logo of the National Library of Medicine
National Library of Medicine in 1999
The library in 1999
38°59′45″N 77°05′56″W / 38.995951°N 77.098832°W / 38.995951; -77.098832
LocationBethesda, Maryland, United States
TypeMedical library
Established1836; 190 years ago (1836)
(as the Library of the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army)
Reference to legal mandate
Public Law 941 – August 3, 1956, an amendment to Title III of the Public Health Service Act
Branch ofNational Institutes of Health
BranchesFive
Collection
Items collected
books, journals, manuscripts, images, and multimedia; genomic, chemical, toxicological, and environmental data; drug information; clinical trials data; health data standards; software; and consumer health information
Size7 million physical items; 45 million digital citations; one billion genetic sequences (2023)
Criteria for collection
Acquiring, organizing, and preserving the world's scholarly biomedical literature
Access and use
Access requirements
Open to the public
CirculationBillions of electronic searches annually
Population served
Hundreds of millions of online users (2026)
Other information
BudgetUS $497,548,000 (2024)
DirectorStephen Sherry (Acting)
Employees741 (2024)
Websitenlm.nih.gov

The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.

Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its collections include more than seven million books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images on medicine and related sciences, including some of the world's oldest and rarest works.

As of December 2025, the acting director of the NLM was Stephen Sherry.

History

The precursor of the National Library of Medicine, established in 1836, was the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, a part of the office of the Surgeon General of the United States Army. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and its Medical Museum were founded in 1862 as the Army Medical Museum. Throughout their history, the Library of the Surgeon General's Office and the Army Medical Museum often shared quarters. From 1866 to 1887, they were housed in Ford's Theatre after production there was stopped following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

In 1956, the library collection was transferred from the control of the U.S. Department of Defense to the Public Health Service of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and renamed the National Library of Medicine through an act of Congress and President John F. Kennedy. The library moved to its current quarters in Bethesda, Maryland on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, in 1962.

Designed to protect the NLM collection from adversarial threats, the building is constructed with limestone and has 50 mi (80 km) of bookshelves underground. The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications began in 1968, MEDLINE in the 1970s, the National Center for Biotechnology Information in 1988, MedlinePlus in 1998, with ClinicalTrials.gov and PubMed Central launching in 2000. NLM has partnerships with national libraries in some 20 countries, and outreach to consumers and health professionals worldwide. In 2023, MedlinePlus pages were accessed 850 million times serving 440 million users. The 2024 budget for NLM was $498 million.

Directors

Directors from 1945 to present

No. Portrait Director Took office Left office Refs.
1 Leon Lloyd Gardner 1945 1946
2 Joseph Hamilton McNinch 1946 1949
3 Frank Bradway Rogers 1949 August 31, 1963
4 Martin Marc Cummings January 1, 1964 September 30, 1984
5 Donald A. B. Lindberg October 11, 1984 March 31, 2015
acting Betsy Humphreys April 1, 2015 September 11, 2016
6 Patricia Flatley Brennan September 12, 2016 September 30, 2023
acting Stephen Sherry October 1, 2023 Present

Publications and informational resources

Since 1879, the National Library of Medicine has published the Index Medicus, a monthly guide to articles, in nearly five thousand selected journals. The last issue of Index Medicus was printed in December 2004, but this information is offered in the freely accessible PubMed, among the more than fifteen million MEDLINE journal article references and abstracts going back to the 1960s and 1.5 million references going back to the 1950s.

In 1986 Director Lindberg's Grateful Med project, named after the Grateful Dead band, facilitated direct access to the NLM MEDLINE database by making it significantly more affordable for all health professionals.

The National Library of Medicine runs the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which houses biological databases (PubMed among them) that are freely accessible on the Internet through the Entrez search engine and Lister Hill National Center For Biomedical Communications. As the United States National Release Center for SNOMED CT, NLM provides SNOMED CT data and resources to licensees of the NLM UMLS Metathesaurus. NLM maintains the ClinicalTrials.gov registry for human interventional and observational studies. Additionally NLM runs ChemIDplus, which is a chemical database of over 400,000 chemicals complete with names, synonyms, and structures. It includes links to NLM and other databases and resources, including links to federal, state and international agencies.

Toxicology and environmental health

The Toxicology and Environmental Health Program was established at the National Library of Medicine in 1967 and is charged with developing computer databases compiled from the medical literature and from the files of governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The program has implemented several information systems for chemical emergency response and public education, such as the Toxicology Data Network, TOXMAP, Tox Town, Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders, Toxmystery, and the Household Products Database. These resources are accessible without charge on the internet.[citation needed]

Radiation exposure

The United States National Library of Medicine Radiation Emergency Management System provides:

Radiation Emergency Management System is produced by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Office of Planning and Emergency Operations, in cooperation with the National Library of Medicine, Division of Specialized Information Services, with subject matter experts from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many U.S. and international consultants.

Extramural division

The Extramural Division provides grants to support research in medical information science and to support planning and development of computer and communications systems in medical institutions. Research, publications, and exhibitions on the history of medicine and the life sciences also are supported by the History of Medicine Division.

National Center for Biotechnology Information

The National Center for Biotechnology Information is an intramural division within National Library of Medicine that creates public databases in molecular biology, conducts research in computational biology, develops software tools for analyzing molecular and genomic data, and disseminates biomedical information, all to improve understanding of processes affecting human health and disease.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "A Brief History of NLM". US National Library of Medicine. 2026. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "About the National Library of Medicine". US National Library of Medicine. 17 March 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "National Library of Medicine, Congressional Justification FY 2025" (PDF). National Library of Medicine, US National Institutes of Health. 7 March 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
  4. ↑ "Collection Development Guidelines of the National Library of Medicine". US National Library of Medicine. 1 December 2023. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
  5. 1 2 "Passing the NLM Torch: Welcome to Dr. Steve Sherry!". NLM Musings from the Mezzanine. NLM. October 4, 2023.
  6. ↑ DeBakey ME (1991). "The National Library of Medicine. Evolution of a premier information center". JAMA. 266 (9): 1252–58. doi:10.1001/jama.266.9.1252. PMID 1870251.
  7. ↑ "National Library of Medicine Org Chart" (PDF). July 2025. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  8. ↑ "National Library of Medicine (NLM) - NLM Directors". The NIH Almanac. National Institutes of Health. November 3, 2023. Archived from the original on Sep 22, 2023.
  9. ↑ "Dr. Rogers, NLM Head, To Retire Aug. 31; Will Assume Colorado Post" (PDF). The NIH Record. 15 (11): 3, 6. June 5, 1963.
  10. ↑ "Martin Cummings To Direct NLM, Effective Jan. 1" (PDF). The NIH Record. 15 (25): 1, 6. December 17, 1963. The Library was first founded as the Library of the Army Surgeon General's office in 1836 and was established as the National Library of Medicine under Public Health Service administration in 1956.
  11. ↑ "Dr. Martin Cummings, NLM Director, To Retire Oct. 1" (PDF). The NIH Record. 35 (20): 9. September 27, 1983.
  12. ↑ "Computer Medicine Expert Named NLM Director" (PDF). The NIH Record. 36 (13): 1, 11. June 19, 1984.
  13. ↑ "Swearing-in ceremony: Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., director, National Library of Medicine, October 11, 1984". NLM. Archived from the original on February 23, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  14. ↑ "Lindberg Retires After 31 Years Leading NLM". NLM. April 14, 2015. Archived from the original on March 20, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  15. ↑ "Dr. Brennan Publicly Sworn in as NLM Director". NLM. September 19, 2016. Archived from the original on March 9, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  16. ↑ "Statement on the retirement of Patricia Flatley Brennan". NIH. August 31, 2023. Archived from the original on March 17, 2025. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  17. ↑ Price, Gary (October 4, 2023). "Dr. Steve Sherry Selected as Acting Director, National Library of Medicine (NLM)". InfoDocket. Archived from the original on September 10, 2024. Retrieved March 7, 2025.
  18. ↑ "Stephen Sherry, PhD, Acting Director, National Library of Medicine". NLM.
  19. ↑ "PubMed". United States National Library of Medicine. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2013.
  20. ↑ Dorsch, J. L.; Faughnan, J. G.; Humphreys, B. L. (2022). "Grateful Med: Direct access to MEDLINE for health professionals with personal computers". Information Services & Use. 42 (2): 151–160. doi:10.3233/ISU-220147. PMC 9196098. PMID 35720429.
  21. ↑ "SNOMED CT". Archived from the original on 19 July 2018. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
  22. ↑ "ChemIDplus Lite – Chemical information with searchable synonyms, structures, and formulas". Archived from the original on 2022-07-05. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
  23. ↑ "Toxicology and Environmental Health Program Archived 2018-03-12 at the Wayback Machine". National Library of Medicine. Retrieved July 11, 2007.
  24. 1 2 "Radiation Emergency Management System Archived 2019-12-14 at the Wayback Machine". National Library of Medicine.
  25. ↑ "The National Center for Biotechnology Information: Our Mission". The National Center for Biotechnology Information, US National Library of Medicine. 2026. Retrieved 5 September 2026.

Further reading