NLM Musings from the Mezzanine
Innovations in Health Information from the Director of the National Library of Medicine
This summer the United States is experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for days on end across the country. When health challenges emerge, people often turn to libraries as sources of information and support. NLM is proud of its resources that link people to the trusted health information they need.
NLM has advanced biomedicine and public health by acquiring, organizing, preserving, and disseminating knowledge that is essential to research, medicine, and health. We must ensure information being shared and used for research is useful to those who use it, and the answer lies in interoperability.
Meet Dr. Michael Chiang! After he planned for a career as an engineer, he found that his interest in machines could be applied to medicine and help treat people with disease. So he switched his focus (if you will!) to vision science before joining NIH as Director of NEI in November 2020.
Right now, I am reading The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. One quote that struck me the most is, “Libraries are lungs. Books the fresh air breathed in to keep the heart beating, to keep the brain imagining, to keep hope alive.”
Guest post by Kathryn Funk, program manager for NLM’s PubMed Central. In 2020, I shared information about NLM’s launch of the NIH Preprint Pilot: A New Experiment for a New Era to explore how inclusion of preprints in our literature resources, PubMed Central (PMC) and PubMed, could accelerate the discoverability and maximize the impact of … Continue reading NIH Preprint Pilot Expands to Include Preprints Across NIH-Funded Research
When we launched this blog over six years ago, we selected the title NLM Musings from the Mezzanine to reflect that the thoughts and ideas originated in this beautiful place, situated on the upper story of the National Library of Medicine building on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. I reflected on this inspirational place … Continue reading The NLM Mezzanine . . . A Space and a Place
During the summer of 2017, my first summer as Director of the National Library of Medicine, Joyce Backus—our then-NLM Associate Director for Library Operations (ADLO)—approached me with a wild idea: “How about we engage an architectural firm to guide renovations of our library space?” Joyce was a forward-thinking ADLO and had already done much to … Continue reading Anticipating a Future We Never Anticipated
One of the great joys of being the Director of the National Library of Medicine is the many opportunities for me to express gratitude. In the past, I have given thanks to NLM staff who are veterans (2021), for progress during my tenure (2020), and to our amazing NLM staff members (2019). This year, I … Continue reading Giving Thanks Where Thanks is Due
This blog contains my remarks from the 2022 Lindberg-King Lecture and Scientific Symposium: Science, Society, and the Legacy of Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., which took place on September 1, 2022. Watch a recording of the event here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTDPTxjL6oc&t=10617s I had the great fortune of becoming the director of the National Library of Medicine immediately following … Continue reading When You Stand on the Shoulders of a Giant, What Do You See?
Guest post by Richard J. Hodes, MD, Director, National Institute on Aging, and Eliseo Pérez-Stable, MD, Director, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, NIH. A few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we shared how NIH was working to speed innovation in the development, commercialization, and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 through NIH’s Rapid … Continue reading RADx-UP Program Addresses Data Gaps in Underrepresented Communities