NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE SERVICES U. S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE Public Health Service History The National Library of Medicine, founded in 1836 and known successively as The Library of the Surgeon General's Office, The Army Medical Library, and The Armed Forces Medical Library is now a part of the Public Health Service, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Public Health Service Publication No. 507 (Revised September 1958) NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Purpose It is the aim of the National Library of Medicine to make its resources avail- able to all workers who may have need of them. In fulfilling this aim, the National Library of Medicine considers that its main role should be to supple- ment the resources of local and regional libraries. Library Hours The Library is open to the public Monday through Friday........ 8:30 a. m. to 9 p. m. Saturday....... 8:30 a. m. to 5 p. m. The Library is closed on Sunday Special hours during the summer and on holidays Loans What May Be Borrowed All printed literature in the Library's collection is available for loan, with the exception of ordinary, current, in-trade publications where the presumption of widespread accessibility elsewhere is rea- sonable. In the case of material in the History of Medicine Division, requests will be examined individually. Who May Borrow Only other libraries may borrow from the National Library of Medicine. In- dividuals may borrow through their local libraries or they may come to the Li- brary and use the material on the pre- mises. For qualified researchers under- taking long-term bibliographical pro- jects at the Library, study tables in the stacks will be made available, insofar as facilities permit, on application to the Head of the Circulation Section. Form of Loans Material in the Library will be loaned in the original form or in photocopy (microfilm or photoprints). The Na- tional Library of Medicine reserves the right to determine in which form the loan will be made, taking into consider- 1 ation costs of photocopying, copyright restrictions, rarity of the item requested, its physical condition, the frequency of use of the item, shipping costs, and any other points which seem pertinent. In general, requests for periodical articles will be filled with photocopy since orig- inal volumes of journals do not leave the Library. While loan service is in- ternational, normally loans to libraries outside the continental United States will be made in the form of photocopies only. Procedures for Borrowing 1. Requests for interlibrary loans are to be made in writing, either on the ALA Interlibrary Loan Form or the NLM Interlibrary Loan Form, available from the Circulation Section, National Li- brary of Medicine. All requests must be signed by the librarian making the request, and the signature shall be un- derstood to be certification that the material requested is not available in the borrowing library. 2. Requests for loans should contain full bibliographical information. For books, this consists of full name of author, title, place, publisher, and date of publication. When feasible, the NLM call number should be given. A request for an 2 article should show the name of the journal, date of issue, volume number, author and title of the article, and the pages (inclusive numbering) on which the article appears. 3. Loans of original works are made on condition that the greatest care be taken in packing and transmitting ma- terial for return to the National Library of Medicine. Among other precau- tions, the corners and edges of books must be well protected; unbound ma- terial should not be rolled but should be sent flat, preferably by mail. All returns must be adequately insured. Original material from the History of Medicine Division is to be used within the borrowing library. Loans in origi- nal form are sent at the expense of the National Library of Medicine, but are to be returned by the borrowing library prepaid. Any convenient method of transportation (e. g., book parcel post) is acceptable. 4. The borrowing library may retain original material four weeks from the date of receipt at the library. No re- newals are granted. Any item may be recalled by the National Library of Medicine at any time. Interlibrary loans in the form of photocopies may be 3 retained permanently by the borrowing library, to dispose of as it wishes. 5. Loans of non-serial material pub- lished prior to 1801 should be requested directly from the History of Medicine Division, 11000 Euclid Avenue at Adel- bert Road, Cleveland 6, Ohio. SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICES Pictorial worksy and facsimile copying Works such as portraits, photographs, etchings, and caricatures which are part of the Library's collections will not be loaned outside the Library. Whenever (a) copies of such works, or (b) facsimile photocopies, in positive copy or to exact size of the original, or (c) enlarged copies, as for exhibit or other purposes, are re- quired, photographic copies can be fur- nished on a reimbursable basis; cost esti- mates for such work will be provided on request. Requests of this kind received from agencies of the Federal Govern- ment, when accompanied by adequate justification, will be filled free of charge. Copying of works of more than ordinary length Copying of works of more than ordinary length, or of entire works, or of long runs 4 of serial publications, and the like, will not be undertaken under ordinary cir- cumstances. Under special circum- stances the Library may entertain re- quests for such services, whether for film or paper copies; in appropriate cases, the Library may lend film copies already on hand to other agencies, either governmental or commercial, for duplication on film or paper. Text and line drawings If faithful reproductions of photographs or plates or other half-tone work in a book or journal article are desired, the requester should indicate this need, so that special attention may be given to this aspect. Routine service is satisfac- tory only for the reproduction of text and line drawings. Reference Service Reference librarians are available to help those who come to the Library. Questions which require brief search will be answered by telephone. Biblio- graphic searches on specific subjects will be undertaken, as the Library's facilities permit, in response to written requests from those who have exhausted the resources of their local libraries. Requests for bibliographic searches may 5 be made by other libraries or by indi- viduals and should state 1) the subject, defined in considerable detail with delineation of any special aspects which are of particular interest; 2) the years to be covered; 3) the languages to be included; and 4) the sources already examined. It is also helpful to the bibliographer to know in detail the purpose for which the bibliography is to be used. Request blanks for the bibliographic services are available. Information about existing bibliogra- phies will also be supplied. To insure accuracy, lists of references to be verified should be submitted in writing. A list of available bibliographies pre- pared by the National Library of Medi- cine is available upon request. Translators and Research Workers The Library does not provide translat- ing service, but will attempt to locate existing translations or abstracts. It maintains a register of translators and research workers with whom private arrangements can be made. The Li- 6 brary cannot take responsibility for the work of the people on its register, nor is it always able to supply information about their charges. History of Medicine Division The Library's collection of monographs (except theses and certain pamphlets) published before 1801, together with material relating to them, is located at its History of Medicine Division, 11000 Euclid Avenue at Adelbert Road, Cleve- land 6, Ohio. Special rules pertain to the use of ma- terial in this Division and correspond- ence on it should be addressed directly to the Division. All of the material listed in the Cata- logue of Incunabula and Manu- scripts in the Army Medical Library, by D. M. Schullian and F. E. Sommer (1950) has been microfilmed. Micro- films will be loaned on request. Art Section The Art Section of the Library contains a wide range of woodcuts, etchings, 7 caricatures, fine engravings, oil portraits, photographs, and other non-clinical illus- trations relating to medicine and the allied sciences. Reproductions (prints and copy negatives) of pictorial items in the collections, including lantern slides, are available at nominal cost. (See p. 4.) Orders should be sub- mitted directly to the Head, Art Section. Medical Motion Picture Collection The National Library of Medicine has established an archival collection of documentary medical motion pictures for reference and research purposes. The collection is being built by means of donation and consists chiefly of obsolete films of historical interest. The collec- tion does not circulate, but films may be viewed in the Library on request. Publications 1. The Current List of Medical Literature, a monthly publication of the Library, lists the contents of selected 8 scientific journals currently received. A subject and author index is included with each issue, and a semiannual cumulation of the indexes is also fur- nished. Subscriptions to the Current List are available through the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Print- ing Office, Washington 25, D. C, at $13.50 a year. (Foreign subscriptions, $17.00.) 2. The Armed Forces Medical Library Catalog 1950-1954 (6 v) and its annual supplements contain the record of books and serials cataloged by the Library from 1950 to date. Both the basic set and the annual volumes are published in two alphabets, by author and by subject. The 1950-1954 Catalog is for sale directly from the publishers, J. W. Edwards, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan; priced at $64.00 per set, f. o. b. Ann Arbor. The 1957 annual volume, the second to appear as the National Library of Medicine Catalog, and the 1955-1956 volumes are for sale by the Card Divi- sion, Library of Congress, Washington 25, D. C, priced at $17.50 plus 40 cents postage for each volume. 9 All issues of the Catalog are published as supplements to the Library of Con- gress Catalogs. 3. Copies of the Library's multilithed catalog cards for the current year are available as a series only, on subscrip- tion from the Card Division, Library of Congress. The series contains one copy of each card and is priced at one cent per card. 4. The National Library of Medicine Classification; A Scheme for the Shelf Arrangement of Books in the Field of Medicine and Its Related Sciences, 1956. This second edition of the Library's Classification is for sale by the Superintendent of Docu- ments, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C, and is priced at $2.00 per copy. Additions and Changes, List No. 1, February 1958 21. Distributed by the Library free upon request. 5. Card Catalogs: Keys to the Li- brary's Collections. This descrip- tive list (15 p.) was prepared in 1956 to make the information contained in the collections more accessible. It is distributed free upon request. 6. The Index-Catalogue of the Li- brary of the Surgeon General's 10 Office is a publication of the National Library of Medicine. Fifty-eight vol umes have been published since its in- ception in 1880; the latest and final volume in the traditional form is Volume XI of the Fourth Series covering mate- rial indexed under the letters "MH- MN." Volume XI, which appeared in 1955, is available from the Superintend- ent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, at $9.00 per copy. In addition, the section on "Military Medi- cine" and the "Supplementary List of Abbreviations for Serial Publications" in Volume XI have been made available as separate reprints. Copies of the Index-Catalogue are deposited in many libraries and research institutions throughout the world. A microprint edition of the Index-Catalogue is offered for sale by Readex Microprint Corporation, 100 Fifth Avenue, New York City, at $75. A monographic Supplementary Series, derived from the files of unpublished entries remaining from the Index-Catalogue, is also in preparation. 7. The Bibliography of Medical Re- views is an annual listing, by subject, of recent medical review articles. Vol- ume 3 for 1958 is available through the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. 11 Government Printing Office, Washing- ton, D. C. at $1.00 per copy. 8. Occasional bibliographies of a com- prehensive nature on subjects of current interest are published and distributed free upon request. Among others, Pathology and Physiology of Burns, appeared in 1952, The Structure, Composition and Growth of Bone (for sale by the Superintendent of Docu- ments, U. S. Government Printing Office, at $1.00) appeared in 1955. An extensive bibliography on Cancer Chemotherapy, A Bibliography of Agents appeared in 1956 as a supple- ment to the journal "Cancer Research." Guide to Russian Medical Litera- ture, Public Health Service Publication No. 602, Bibliography of Space Medi- cine, and Staphylococcal Infection appeared in 1958. Psychopharmaca, a bibliography on drugs altering be- haviour, is in press. A list of these bibliographies is available upon request. 12 TELEPHONE NUMBERS Executive 3-6300 (Code 181) Extension Executive Office.................. 6264 Interlibrary Loans................ 6248 Reference Service................. 5369,5391 Photographic Services............. 6365,6343 Art Section....................... 4369 Government Documents........... 6125 History of Medicine Division (Cleveland, Ohio)........RAndolph 1-0444 13 U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTINS OFFICE: 1968 Letters requesting information about the Na- tional Library of Medicine and itsservices^should be addressed to: The Director National Library of Medicine 7th Street and Independence Ave. SW. Washington 25, D. C.