The National Library of Medicine (NLM), on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has been a center of information innovation since its founding in 1836. The world’s largest biomedical library, NLM maintains and makes available a vast print collection and produces electronic information resources on a wide range of topics that are searched billions of times each year by millions of people around the globe. It also supports and conducts research, development, and training in biomedical informatics and health information technology. In addition, the Library coordinates an 8,000+ member Network of the National Library of Medicine that promotes and provides access to health information in communities across the United States.
Connect with NLM
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Specialty
History of Medicine
Collections
The NLM collects, preserves, makes available, and interprets for diverse audiences one of the world’s richest collections of historical material related to health and disease, one which spans ten centuries, encompass a variety of digital and physical formats, and originates from nearly every part of the globe.
Explore:
- LocatorPlus Catalog, the library’s catalog of books, journals, and audiovisuals and access points to other medical research tools, including links to publicly available Internet resources in medicine.
- NLM Digital Collections, a rapidly growing resource including born-digital materials, books, serials, audiovisuals, still images and graphic materials, manuscripts, and oral histories.
- PubMed Central, a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, including historically-significant back issues.
- NLM Web Collecting and Archiving, including its Global Health Events archive of collections pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic and more.
- NLM’s award-winning Exhibition Program and its diverse portfolio of online and traveling exhibitions which explore the relationship between medicine and the arts, science and society, patients and practitioners, and the technology of medicine.
- Circulating Now: From the Historical Collections of the NLM, popular blog featuring regular posts authored by NLM patrons, interns, volunteers, and staff.
- Profiles in Science presenting the lives and work of innovators in science, medicine, and public health through in-depth research, curation, and digitization of archival collection materials.
- Medicine on Screen, a curated portal featuring films from the NLM’s world-renowned historical audiovisuals collection.
- Two free and richly-illustrated books about the NLM and its collections:
NLM Reading Room, Services, and Hours
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/readingroom/index.html