[This tape was duplicated from a 16mm film by Colorlab for the National Library of Medicine]
[August 2003 NLM call number HF 0239]
[THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, and WELFARE Public Health Service PRESENTS]
[THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE]
[Produced by PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE AUDIOVISUAL FACILITY]
[Front of the NLM building is shown.]
[DECEMBER 14, 1961]
[Narrator:] Dedication day for the new National Library of Medicine building in Bethesda, Maryland.
The library's Board of Regents and many distinguished guests arrive.
Doctors from the United States and other nations.
Ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps.
Congressmen, senators, military, and civilian leaders.
[Dr. Worth B. Daniels Chairman, Board of Regents National Library of Medicine]
[Dr. Daniels:] Today we come together to dedicate
a great new facility for the greatest medical library in the world,
the National Library of Medicine.
[ABRAHAM RIBICOFF Secretary, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare]
[Dr. Ribicoff:] One hundred and twenty-five years ago as one of his last official acts,
Dr. Joseph Lovell, Surgeon General of the United States,
authorized a budget item which called for
one hundred and fifty dollars for medical books.
Thus simply and modestly began the amassing of the great collection
which is today the National Library of Medicine.
This country owes a great debt to Dr. Lovell
and the generations of Army officers who followed him,
for their vision and perseverance.
[Senator LISTER HILL]
[Senator Hill:] To you who are the guardians of this knowledge
which has been accumulated over the centuries,
and to you whose proud task it will be
to preserve and enshrine the advances of tomorrow.
We at this hour
turn over this magnificent building,
which will be a repository of ancient truths
and future discovery.
[Narrator:] This is an important day in the history of the National Library of Medicine.
The building is new, but the institution
and its tradition of service are more than
125 years old.
The library is a tribute to those whose foresight
and years of work led to this realization of an ideal.
To men such as Robert Fletcher: surgeon, avid cataloger and bibliographer.
Fielding H. Garrison: doctor of medicine,
dedicated librarian and historian.
And Dr. John Shaw Billings.
Without a doubt the library's greatest debt is to Dr. Billings.
As a commissioned medical officer during the Civil War,
he was assigned to the Surgeon General's Office in Washington in 1864.
Under his charge, the small library of the Surgeon General
grew from the 1,365 volumes listed in the 1864 catalogue
to some 117,000 books and 152,000 pamphlets.
To house the collections, he planned a new building
that was erected on the mall in Washington.
In this building the library was opened to the public
in 1888.
In 1876, Dr. Billings published a specimen fasciculus
to illustrate his design for the world-famous
Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office.
Typical of his vision was the name he chose for the collection:
The National Medical Library.
The monumental task of compiling and publishing
the Index Catalogue began in 1880
and continued until a total of three million author-subject references
had been published by the library in 61 volumes and five series.
[The camera pans down a shelf holding a set of volumes.]
Starting in 1950, to keep pace with current acquisitions,
the Index Catalogue was replaced by a monthly journal index
and an annual catalogue of books.
Quinquennial cumulations of the annual catalogue
are published in several volumes.
Another contribution of Dr. Billings was the Index Medicus.
Prepared with the help of Dr. Fletcher,
this was a monthly bibliographic key to current medical literature.
Today's Index Medicus lists over 12,000 articles each month
by author and subject.
The literature is published in some 30 languages.
John Shaw Billings' contributions to the world of medical science were immense.
Certainly one of his greatest legacies was the institution
given formal statutory base in 1956.
In that year Senators Hill and Kennedy initiated legislation
that became the National Library of Medicine Act,
under which authority the jurisdiction over the library
was transferred from the military to the Public Health Service.
In 1961, this reading room had been in use for 73 years.
The collection of a few hundred volumes had grown to 1,100,000
books, serials, and pamphlets,
and was increasing by 80,000 items annually.
The old red brick building had served its purpose well,
and far beyond the original requirements.
[Stacks are shown, along with staff at work in the library.]
While leave-taking was filled with nostalgia
and fond memories for the staff and director,
the feeling soon passed because a new building was waiting.
A building great in size yet gracious in design,
with the most carefully planned facilities,
was opened for service in April 1962.
Equipped and staffed by the United States government
for service to all who work in the fields of medical sciences.
Inside, old friends meet in new surroundings.
[Users of the library are shown.]
A welcome sight to scholars and physicians
is the History of Medicine collection,
consisting of hundreds of reference volumes
for the students of medical history,
and thousands of medical works published before 1801.
The collection includes many early manuscripts and incunabula.
Such as the canon of Abyssinia.
In an Arabic manuscript.
In a Latin manuscript.
In a Hebrew edition of 1491.
And in a Latin edition of 1479.
It includes the classics of medicine.
Galen.
Vesalius.
Harvey.
And the multifold works of other men.
The library's Board of Regents meets behind the scenes
in the new building.
Its duties as defined by the National Library of Medicine Act
are to advise, consult with, and make recommendations to the Surgeon General.
Thus the agenda of these meetings
deal with every area of the library's service.
First, in the tradition of the past,
is the acquisition and exchange of books and serials,
which constitute the literature of medicine.
Over 200 bibliographies and publishers' lists from all nations
are continually examined and checked for items to be ordered
for the library in an acquisition program that covers the entire world.
This results in the arrival of hundreds of items each day.
The pieces received are sorted,
checked in,
and arranged for delivery to various work areas.
In the catalogue section,
entry forms and subject headings are selected
and books are classified.
Cataloging records are typed on mats for the reproduction of cards.
Many of the cards are destined for use in the public catalogue,
under main entry, and subject entry.
Other copies of the cards will be used for the published catalogue.
To provide a bridge from the catalogue records
to the actual volume on the shelves,
a call number is lettered on each volume.
The binding section provides for the binding of pamphlets
and repair of volumes, and arranges for the necessary binding
of journals and monographs outside the library.
Another item on the Board of Regents' agenda
is a continuing study of the mechanization of indexing of journals.
High-speed automated equipment helps the library's indexers
provide 150,000 current references annually.
Daily, about 60 medical journals
containing some 800 articles
are delivered to the indexers who compile the information
to be printed in the Index Medicus.
To assist in this work, a dictionary file is maintained
to record the new drug, chemical, medical, and foreign language terms
that cannot be found in published dictionaries and reference books.
The indexers assign subject headings
and translate foreign language titles.
The assigned subject headings are converted into numerical equivalents.
Then with perforated tapes and keypunch equipment,
a million cards a year are punched,
automatically typed,
sorted,
combined,
collated,
and matched.
These cards provide the author and subject listings
to be photographed for offset reproduction
in the monthly Index Medicus,
yearly cumulated Index Medicus,
and the Bibliography of Medical Reviews.
But daily the volume of scientific literature is increasing,
and the total articles to be indexed
may soon exceed 180,000 annually.
To meet the challenge of increased volume,
workflow patterns are rearranged and refined
as new business machines are acquired.
Eventually, fully automated systems will provide
for the storage of information on magnetic tapes
from which bibliographies can be furnished on demand.
This application of automation as conceived by the library is known as MEDLARS:
Medical literature analysis and retrieval system.
Acquisition, cataloging, and indexing are the means
to a common objective:
building the collections and providing the keys necessary
for their exploitation.
As the library's collections move into the second million,
every effort is made to meet the world-wide demand
for the use of this accumulated knowledge.
Each year thousands of reference questions are received and answered.
They come by phone...
and by mail from every continent.
Doctors, scientists, and writers
also bring their questions in person.
This requires an active reference service.
Whether the request is routine or unusual,
the information is supplied when the need is authentic,
and local sources are limited.
Information on dental education in Japan
is selected for a doctor in California.
Bibliographies are prepared to answer some requests.
A list of references on narcotic addiction for a physician in Gaza.
A bibliography on planning a small hospital for a doctor in Africa.
In some instances, the library strives to anticipate demand
by preparing comprehensive bibliographies
which are duplicated and distributed.
The library's international acquisition program
and its use of modern methods to extend the record
of its indexing and cataloging operations
naturally prompt loan requests for source materials.
The information on its 45 miles of shelves
is freely available to all workers in the medical sciences
through their local libraries, including...
monographs,
journals,
theses,
pamphlets,
early books,
manuscript materials,
and a picture collection
on medical subjects, portraits, and caricatures.
All this material is available for use
by those who come to the library in person.
It is also available by mail on inter-library loan.
The requests increase daily,
and to keep pace with them requires methods
that are modern, fast, and precise.
The information requested is photographed
with mobile cameras located in the stack areas.
Total requests for material number over 125,000 per year,
and this means that a new request must be handled
every minute of every working day.
Any library may participate.
The mechanics are simple and efficient.
In a library in Georgia, a doctor needs certain scientific information.
The local librarian has determined that some of this material
is not in her collection and suggests he may wish
to have it requested from the National Library of Medicine.
Mailed to the National Library of Medicine,
the request becomes part of the 500 received daily.
The requests are sorted and taken to the stack areas,
where the volumes are kept.
The material is taken off the shelves
and carried to nearby photocopying stations.
The information requested is photographed on film
with the mobile camera, and a print is made
in approximately the size of the original.
In this manner, well over two million pages of photoprints
are sent to borrowing libraries each year.
The average order is received, sorted, processed,
and forwarded within one week.
A Board of Regents meeting may range from acquisitions to xerography.
Usually it will include a discussion of recruitment policies,
personnel, and training programs:
training programs such as the one for library interns.
These are some of the recent graduates of American library schools
who have been selected from among many applicants.
After a year of rotating assignments and seminar discussions,
some will remain at the library,
and some will accept positions in other libraries.
This is one part of a recruitment program
that seeks the highest type of employee.
The library's staff necessarily must be qualified
in many different types of work.
The combined knowledge and ability of the staff,
together with modern methods,
furthers the vast undertaking
begun in the distant past.
All of these people are the mind, the heart,
and the strength of the library.
The National Library of Medicine will continue to acquire, maintain,
and make available the finest and most complete collection
of medical literature and reference material possible,
and to serve all who work in the field of medicine.
[Directed by: Wilmer H. Kimberly Technical Advisors: M. Ruth MacDonald]
[THE END M-523]