[Swearing-in Ceremony Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D. Director National Library of Medicine October 11, 1984]
[Dr. Bray:] Good morning, I am Hughley Bray filling in for Dr. Thomas Malone, the Deputy Director of NIH
who is representing Dr. Wyngaarden at agency heads meeting downtown this morning.
I am only filling in though, not as Deputy Director
but only as Master of Ceremonies.
Dr. Wyngaarden, Dr. Lindberg, Mrs. Lindberg, son Jonathan.
I regret through circumstances beyond our control
that the ceremony did not take place as scheduled last week.
It is on days such as that when we find out whether we are essential or not essential.
Somebody...I heard somebody say this morning
that they wanted to swear in Don Lindberg as director of the National Library of Medicine,
but they closed the whole government instead.
If Tom Malone were here I know he would say,
"I am especially pleased to act as Master of Ceremonies this morning
for this very significant event,
since I was chairman of the search committee
which resulted in the recommendation
of Dr. Donald Lindberg as Director of the National Library of Medicine."
At this time I should like to read a couple of telegrams.
The first: "On behalf of the Board of Directors
and as Executive Director of the Medical Library Association,
I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your appointment
as Director of the National Library of Medicine.
I know that your expertise and interest
in the delivery of health information will contribute
to your effective leadership of our National Library of Medicine.
The Medical Library Association stands ready
to assist you in that endeavor.
Best wishes for a rewarding and productive future. Raymond A. Palmer."
And these.. next telegram
"Congratulations on your exciting new position.
Sorry I cannot be there to wish you well personally.
I know you will do your usual outstanding job.
Sincerely, Perry Keitges,
Chairman of the American Biologist Computer Commission."
Also, Dr. John Townsend, who I believe is your successor
at the University of Missouri,
flew in last week for the ceremony.
They couldn't reach him in time.
He doesn't plan to come back today.
[Laughter.]
Now, Don Lindberg's career is briefly spelled out in your program,
but it doesn't indicate how old he is.
Not that it's a secret.
However, I will not mention it except to say the year he was born
in the Big Apple was also the birth year for the comedian Dom Deluise,
the Dynasty TV star Joan Collins,
and the country singer Roy Clark.
It was also the year Charles Laughton won an Oscar for the Private Life of Henry the VIII,
and in the Rose Bowl Southern California beat Pittsburgh 35 to nothing.
Oddly enough, while Broker's Tip won the Kentucky Derby that year,
FDR ordered all the banks closed.
But now it's time to give serious consideration to the ceremony at hand.
I should like to present the Director of the National Institutes of Health,
Dr. James B. Wyngaarden.
[Applause.]
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] Hughley, you missed pointing out the 1933,
the Washington Senators were the world champions of baseball.
[Applause.]
To Dr. Lindberg, Mrs. Lindberg, Jonathan,
other members of the Lindberg family, colleagues,and distinguished guests.
I can well imagine that Don may have been of two minds
when considering our offer of the directorship
of the National Library of Medicine.
On the one hand are the attractive features, not necessarily in priority order.
There are the facilities, two beautifully
and practically-designed buildings including this splendid auditorium.
There is the library's nearly 150-year history,
giving its modern accomplishments the deep soil from which to spring
and the perspective from which to guide the high-tech promises of the future.
There's the prestige of leading an organization of international renown.
There's the glamour of life in cosmopolitan Washington,
that was written for me.
And perhaps I should suggest one more that Don is probably only now beginning to appreciate,
and that is the superb and dedicated staff of the library.
At this point I must add a personal note of thanks to Dr. Harold Schoolman and Mr. Kent Smith
for their superb performance during the interim directorship in the many months of the selection process.
On the minus side perhaps is an assessment of the post of the director.
NLM is government bureaucracy sometimes more cumbersome than even that of academia.
Terms like freezes and A-76 will become prominent in the director's vocabulary.
Also there is the shadow of Marty Cummings' achievements
after a 20-year directorship.
Pretty big shoes to fill.
And most of all there is the awesome responsibility of not only acquiring all of the world's
medical literature, but of getting it out to everyone who needs it.
Students, practitioners, researchers.
If Don did hesitate, I'm sure it was just for a moment, because those areas that seem like
minuses to some would be seen as beckoning challenges to a man like Don.
The reason this is true, I think,
is that he knows himself and he knows the job,
from the many years of working with the library and NIH
as a consultant and a friend.
Now, Lindberg's qualifications as a teacher, administrator, pathologist, computer expert,
are spelled out in the program.
To recapitulate briefly, a graduate of Amherst College,
he received his medical degree from The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York.
He has been associated with the University of Missouri for over 20 years
as a teacher of pathology and of library and information science,
and most recently as director of the School of Medicine's Information Science Group.
At this point I'd like to digress momentarily to read a short message from Dr. William D. Bradshaw,
Dean of the Medical School of the University of Missouri.
He asked me to insert into the swearing-in ceremony the fact that,
"We are extremely pleased that one of our best has been chosen for this very noteworthy position.
We are very proud of him and wish him every success and that all his program problems be small."
Programs be large, problems be small.
What isn't reflected in the program is his humanism.
A humanism that recognizes that technology is a tool to serve people and that like medicine,
there is art as well as science involved in information technology.
The magic of the electronic age is not really magic, of course,
and the work and expense of this high-tech vision
must be rigorously weighed against the concrete benefits that are promised.
Don has often made this distinction
between the computer-age vision, which he knows so thoroughly,
and the necessity to count the costs.
He is a dreamer, he can see the future,
but as a decisionmaker he is practical, service-oriented,
and these considerations will rule his judgment.
As many of you know, one thing the library is famous for
is its penchant for acronyms.
MEDLARS, MEDLINE, MESH, and dozens more.
Don was somewhat concerned about his initials, DABL,
but I assured him that we knew he would take his job seriously.
The library's first director was Dr. John Shaw Billings,
who served for 30 years from 1865 to 1895.
As I noted earlier, Dr. Cummings served for 20 years.
Dr. Lindberg is a young man,
and I don't think it's too much for us to expect
that he will take the library into the second millennium
that's only fifteen short years away, and beyond.
But whatever his length of service to the library and its worldwide constituency,
I know that he will make a significant and positive impact on its history,
and Don, we welcome you and your family to the NIH community.
[Applause.]
[Dr. Bray:] It is now time administer the oath.
Would you all please step to the microphone?
I'll let you hold there, and you put your left hand, I thought you've found it already.
And that's a good place for you, and would the audience please rise?
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] Will you raise your right hand, please?
I, Donald Lindberg.
[Dr. Lindberg:] I, Donald Lindberg.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] Do solemnly swear.
[Dr. Lindberg:] Do solemnly swear.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
[Dr. Lindberg:] That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] Against all enemies foreign and domestic.
[Dr. Lindberg:] Against all enemies foreign and domestic.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] And that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
[Dr. Lindberg:] And that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] That I take this obligation freely.
[Dr. Lindberg:] That I take this obligation freely.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.
[Dr. Lindberg:] Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties
[Dr. Lindberg:] And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] of the office on which I am about to enter.
[Dr. Lindberg:] of the office on which I am about to enter.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] So help me God.
[Dr. Lindberg:] So help me God.
[Dr. Wyngaarden:] Congratulations, Don.
[Dr. Lindberg:] Thank you very much, Jim.
[Applause.]
[Dr. Bray:] Will the director of the National Library of Medicine present his remarks?
[Dr. Lindberg:] Harry, Dr. Wyngaarden, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends.
The National Library of Medicine has the responsibility
to collect, organize, and create access to the biomedical scientific literature.
Over almost 150 years it has done an outstandingly successful job
in fulfilling this responsibility.
The NLM systems have become more than just a model for the world,
they have become the backbone for our access to recorded knowledge
of theory and progress in medicine and science.
These systems that index, abstract, and organize the millions of pieces
of scientific literature and facts, provide the fundamental infrastructure
of scientific investigation and progress toward the control of disease.
Such conclusions are obvious to sophisticated readers and users of library services.
Unfortunately, this is not at all obvious to non-scientists who lately tend to focus on the
problems, heartbreak, and challenge of particular diseases
as a rationale for managing our large American science organizations.
It is clear to me already that the wonderful staff of NLM,
who take such pride in their careful scholarly work,
worry increasingly that there might be diminishing resources
available to provide access to the vastly increasing stores of scientific knowledge.
These good people do not worry about being unsung heroes
or even being unknown soldiers.
Neither do they fear primarily the challenge to them
to maintain the present systems.
Rather, they are determined that the future must hold new answers,
new systems, and adaptations to new technologies on the one hand,
and on the other hand, responses to the societal and medical questions
which will arise over the next 20 years.
We already know quite a bit about the general nature of the new technologies.
Let me list four external technological factors that we must pay attention to.
One, microprocessors and the massive circuit integration that underlies this technology.
Two, electronic communications networks and the geostationary satellites that underly that technology.
Three, laser disc information and image storage systems.
And four, artificial intelligence techniques for knowledge representation.
While these are a special interest to me,
this is not the proper moment to discuss them further at this time.
What do we know about the other imperatives?
That is, the challenges and changes in medical practice and the larger societal issues.
As usual, these are more difficult questions, and we know comparatively less about them.
Nonetheless, I will give you my own guesses concerning four such issues.
One, it seems clear that the trend toward increasing specialization
and increasingly hospital-based medical practice is not likely to change.
This means of course that the need for information systems
that span disciplines and that integrate and evaluate knowledge will be ever more necessary.
Two, medical care will become increasingly effective.
That is, treatments will increasingly really alter and even cure a disease.
Consequently, the truly thrilling progress in such fields
as cancer research and molecular biology will be to the average citizen,
not an idle curiosity or a newspaper headline,
but a matter of immediate personal concern.
In the interest of time, I leave aside for the moment the insistent demands
upon the health care delivery system
in order that we focus on the informational and decisionmaking aspects.
For the patient, it will increasingly be required
that the physician not only have the compassion
and wisdom we expect in the past,
but absolutely up-to-date information.
For the practitioner of medicine, the book or journal on the shelf
will become increasingly too remote for immediate patient care decisions,
and the computer-based personal information station will become
increasingly useful, comforting, perhaps essential.
Three, the widespread impact of man-made environmental contamination
will almost certainly be a major intellectual and medical concern of the next twenty years.
The amount of information concerning chemistry, toxicology
and workplace exposure, while insufficient, is already very large.
NLM has played a significant role in helping to organize
the specialized information already.
We trust that we'll have the resources and wisdom
to help the field discover how to convert
such information to useful medical knowledge.
And then fourth, we see even outside these hallowed halls
the emergence of a major new segment of industry in America and abroad,
namely, the information services segment
and its attendant equipment manufacture.
In academic institutions as well,
computer and information science will increasingly become a major field of study.
In medicine, lagging as usual, humbly behind,
medical informatics will emerge as a formal research field and academic discipline.
Here too, NLM has played a strong role in the past,
in assisting in the maturation of such studies.
The poet Alexander Pope said very well in 1700
"Know then thyself. Presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man."
Now, to the extent that investigation of man's cognition, learning, and decision-making;
that is, his information processing skills...
to the extent that this can lead to better representation, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in medicine,
then these studies must be an essential activity
of the National Library of Medicine during the coming decades.
In closing, I too wish to record my admiration of the many fine people
at work in the National Library of Medicine.
All whom I have worked with have been outstanding.
Being in league with them makes my job a real pleasure.
Finally, I want to thank especially Dr. Harold Schoolman
and Mr. Kent Smith for their kind assistance to me,
and more importantly for their love for and care of this fine institution.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
[Dr. Bray:] This has been a most pleasant hour
and a major event in the long history of the National Library of Medicine.
Don, please accept on behalf of Tom Malone and myself
the best wishes as you carry out your responsibilities
for this magnificent library.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our program.
You are cordially invited to the reception
in the lobby of this building.
I would like to express appreciation
for the staff of the library that,
responsible for today's event including the reception.
A receiving line will be formed within a few minutes. Thank you all for coming.
[Applause.]
[Camera captures individual members of the audience.]