1943 The Library was inspected by a team of professional librarians, Pp. 302 1945 In August the first number of the Army Medical Library Newsletter was published. Later it was renamed the Army Medical Library News, and eventually the National Library of Medicine News. 1945-1946 Col. Leon Lloyd Gardner, Director. 1946-1949 Col. Joseph Hamilton McNinch, Director. Pp. 332 Pp. 311 Pp. 313 1947 The Army Medical Museum moved from the building, and the Library expanded into the vacant space. Pp. 343 1948 The preliminary edition of the "Army Medical Library Classification" was produced. The Classification was published in 1951, and subsequent editions appeared periodically. Pp. 322 1949-1963 Col. Frank Bradway Rogers, Director. Rogers was the last of the long line of Army medical officers who directed the Library. Pp. 315 1949 The institution published its first annual catalog, Army Medical Library, Author Catalog, 1949. From 1950 until 1965 the AML and Library of Congress cooperated in producing annual and cumulated volumes. Pp. 323 1950 A Catalogue of Incunabula and Manuscripts in the Army Medical Library, by Dorothy M. Schullian and Francis E. Sommer, was published. Pp. 329 1950 The Current List of Medical Literature was revised, enlarged, and changed from a weekly to a monthly periodical in July. Pp. 325 1951 The Library compiled its first policy manual on scope and coverage. Pp. 321 1952 Director Rogers formed the "Friends of the Armed Forces Medical Library," an organization of volunteers. The Friends went out of existence in 1956. Pp. 335 1952 The Secretary of Defense placed the institution under the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and renamed it the Armed Forces Medical Library, on March 4. Pp. 351 1954 The institution published the Subject Heading Authority List used by the Current List Division Armed Forces Medical Library. Pp. 328 1955 The Task Force on Federal Medical Services of the second Hoover Commission released a report recommending that the institution be designated the National Library of Medicine. Pp. 352 1955 The Library discontinued the Index-Catalogue with volume 11 of series 4. Citations to monographs were selected from the large backlog of accumulated cards and published in a special threevolume fifth series in 1959 and 1961. Pp. 324 ervation of the text. Pp. 347 Pp. 458 1956 On March 13 Sen. Lister Hill and Sen. John F. Kennedy submitted to Congress Bill S. 3430: "to promote the progress of medicine and to advance the national health and welfare by creating a National Library of Medicine." Pp. 353 President Eisenhower on August 3 signed legislation transforming the Armed Forces Medical Library into the National Library of Medicine, and placing it in the Public Health Service. Pp. 355 1957 In April the Board of Regents of the Library selected a site on the grounds of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda as the location for a new building. Pp. 356 Director Rogers initiated a new loan policy stating, partially, that the library would no longer lend to individuals, only to other libraries, and that it would provide photocopies of articles without charge in lieu of volumes. Pp. 463 Pp. 453 The Library began its Intern Program designed to give qualified librarians advanced training to enable them to assume posts of responsibility in medical institutions. 1958 Director Rogers and editor Seymour Taine began development of a mechanized system for producing the Library's publications. Pp. 365 1959 A groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 12 to mark the start of construction of the building in Bethesda. Senator Lister Hill dug the first earth. Pp. 356 In July the Public Health Service and American Medical Association signed an agreement under which NLM would publish a monthly bibliography, Index Medicus, designed to replace NLM's Current List and AMA's Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus. The first number of Index Medicus was produced by the new mechanized system, and issued in January 1960. Pp. 367 Part of the Russian Scientific Translation Program was transferred from the National Institutes of Health to NLM in August. The remainder was transferred in 1961. Pp. 396 1960 The National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings . . . was published. Revisions were issued periodically thereafter. Pp. 328 The Library initiated development of a computerized bibliographic system named MEDLARS (medical literature analysis and retrieval system). Pp. 368 1961 Dedication ceremonies for the new building were held in the main reading room on December 14. Pp. 357 1962 On March 3 the first books were moved from the old building in Washington to the new building in Bethesda. The last book was shelved in the new building on May 3. Pp. 359 The new building opened its doors to the public on April 16. Pp. 359 1964 Martin Marc Cummings, Director. Pp. 393 MEDLARS began regular operations. The first bibliography produced by the system was the January number of Index Medicus. Pp. 372 The Library began to accept requests for demand searches produced by MEDLARS. The service was changed in 1973 to an online service, MEDLINE. Pp. 376 The new, high speed phototypesetter named GRACE, graphic arts composing equipment, developed for NLM, began regular operations, producing the August number of Index Medicus. Pp. 373 The old Library-Museum Building on the Mall in Washington was designated as a Registered National Historic Landmark. Pp. 360 The Library began to decentralize MEDLARS by awarding a contract to University of California at Los Angeles to serve as a search center. Pp. 378 The Library received the bequest of Emma Wheat Gillmore. Pp. 465 1965 The first recurring bibliography produced by MEDLARS, Index to Rheumatology, was published in January. Pp. 375 The Billings Centennial was celebrated at the Library on June 17. Pp. 466 On October 22 President Lyndon Johnson approved the Medical Library Assistance Act, authorizing NLM to aid the Nation's medical libraries in expanding their services to the health community. The Drug Literature Program was started. Pp. 399 Pp. 411 1966 NLM began to publish the National Library of Medicine Current Catalog, one of the first regularly recurring completely automated book catalogs. Pp. 381 The Toxicology Information Program was established. Pp. 413 The British MEDLARS center began to operate. This was the first center outside of the United States. Pp. 379 1967 The Drug Literature Program and the Toxicology Information Program were combined to form the Specialized Information Services. Pp. 414 The National Medical Audiovisual Center was transferred from the PHS's Communicable Disease Center to the Library on July 1. Pp. 434 Pp. 404 The Library selected the Francis A. Countway Library as the regional medical library to serve the New England states. Countway was the first of the 11 libraries in the regional medical library network. Director Cummings established the Library's Research and Development Program. Pp. 419 1968 The old Library-Museum Building was demolished so that the site could be used for construction of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Pp. 360 The Library was transferred from the Office of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service to the National Institutes of Health on April 1. Pp. 445 On August 3, President Lyndon Johnson signed Public Law 90456 designating the proposed NLM annex as the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications. Pp. 420 1970 In January MEDLARS produced the first regular monthly number of Abridged Index Medicus, designed to present citations on clinical medicine to practicing physicians. Pp. 383 On March 13 President Richard Nixon approved the Medical Library Assistance Extension Act, extending the original law for 3 years. This was the first of the extension acts, the others being enacted in 1973, 1974, 1977, and 1978. Pp. 404 The Library opened the AIM-TWX on-line retrieval service to a selected group of users in June. This service permitted users to communicate with MEDLARS. It was replaced by MEDLINE in November 1972. Pp. 422 1971 MEDLINE was opened to a selected group of users in December. Pp. 384 1972 TOXICON, the on-line service covering the areas of pharmacology and toxicology, was opened to regular subscribers on Oct. 1. It was the forerunner of TOXLINE, 1973. Pp. 415 1975 The Library accepted MEDLARS II from the contractor on January 3. Planning for the second generation of MEDLARS had started in 1966. Pp. 388 On February 25 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of the Library and other noncommercial libraries to provide single copies of articles to scholars. Pp. 457 Pp. 466 1976 The Library celebrated the Bicentennial of the United States of Pp. 389 1980 The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications was dedicated on May 22, with Senator Hill and other prominent persons in attendance. BIOGRAPHIES of Staff Members Pp. 431 When I began to write this history I hoped to place in the text or notes a biographical sketch of each person who contributed to the development and excellence of the Library. Gradually I learned that we had practically no information about the first generation of staff members, the ex-soldiers who came from battlefields and hospital posts to operate the Library, or about the second generation, the contemporaries of Fielding Garrison and Albert Allemann. While the early librarians were assiduous in accumulating biographical information about others, they seldom retained information about their associates. Of Wise, Roehrig, Steigers, Neumann, Tibbets, Israeli, Shaw, Stone, Fogarty, Hall, Bickel, Stockman, and many others who labored conscientiously to assemble this Library, and to whom all users of its collections and great bibliographies are indebted, we know very little. Much of what I uncovered is incorporated into the text or notes. When I reached the recent period I found the situation different. There was adequate biographical information concerning staff members. But there are and have been so many worthy persons associated with this institution during the past third of a century that inclusion of sketches would have turned this history partially into a biographical dictionary. Furthermore I could not have completed this work in a reasonable length of time if I had also written hundreds of biographical sketches. With regret I decided that the biographical information already in print would have to suffice. Data on recent staff members may be found in A Biographical Directory of Librarians in the United States and Canada, American Men and Women of Science, Who's Who in the East, Who's Who in America, other biographical dictionaries, and biographies and obituaries in professional journals. SOURCES OF INFORMATION ON THE HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY The earliest correspondence and other records concerning the books and journals purchased for the Surgeon General and officers of the Army Medical Department, the literature that formed the foundation of the National Library of Medicine, are in the National Archives. In the Archives is also the correspondence between the Directors of the Library and the Surgeons General |