NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE 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 December 1959) z 6 75, Al-f NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE WASHINGTON, D. C. a Lu U I NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Purpose It is the aim of the National Library of Medicine to make its resources available to all workers who have need of them. In fulfilling this aim, the National Library of Medicine considers that its main role should be to supplement 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. Special hours are in effect during the summer. The Library is closed on Sun- days and on national holidays. 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 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. Requests for material in the History of Medicine Division will be examined individually. Who May Borrow Only libraries may borrow from the National Library of Medicine. Indi- viduals may borrow through their local libraries or they may come to the Library and use the material on the premises. For qualified researchers undertaking long-term bibliographical projects at the Library, study tables in the stacks will be made available, insofar as facilities permit, on application to the Head of the Loan and Stack 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 i right to determine in which form the loan will be made, taking into consider- 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 inter- national, normally loans to libraries out- side the continental United States will be made in the form of photocopies only. Procedures for Borrowing i. 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 Loan and Stack Section, National Li- brary of Medicine. Each request must be authenticated, in handwriting, by authorized personnel in the borrowing library. It is expected that under ordi- nary and usual circumstances, libraries will avail themselves of the resources of the local area before directing requests to the National Library of Medicine. 2. Requests for loans should contain full bibliographical information. For books, 2 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 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 ar- ticle appears. 3. Loans of original works are made on condition that the greatest care be taken in packing and transmitting mate- rial for return to the National Library of Medicine. Among other precautions, the corners and edges of books must be well protected; unbound material should not be rolled but should be sent flat, preferably by mail. Materials loaned in the original are not to be reproduced without written permission of the Na- tional Library of Medicine. All returns must be adequately insured. Original material from the History of Medicine Division is to be used within the borrow- ing library. Loans in original form are sent at the expense of the National Li- brary of Medicine, but are to be returned by the borrowing library prepaid. Any convenient method of transportation (e.g., library insured mail) is acceptable. 4. The borrowing library may retain orig- inal material four weeks from the date 3 of receipt at the library. Shorter loan periods are required for some types of material. No renewals are granted. Any item may be recalled by the Na- tional Library of Medicine at any time. Interlibrary loans in the form of photo- copies may be retained permanently by the borrowing library, to dispose of as it wishes. 5. Loans of non-serial material published prior to 1801 should be requested di- rectly from the History of Medicine Division, 11,000 Euclid Avenue at Adel- bert Road, Cleveland 6, Ohio. Special Photographic Services Pictorial works, 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 cop- ies, as for exhibit or other purposes, are required, 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 Government, 4 when accompanied by adequate justifi- cation, 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 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 dupli- cation 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. 5 Questions which require brief search will be answered by telephone. Bibliographic searches on specific subjects will be undertaken, as the Library's facilities permit, in response to written requests from those who have exhausted the re- sources of their local libraries. Requests for bibliographic searches may be made by other libraries or by individuals and should state i) the subject, defined in considerable detail with delineation of any special aspects which are of particu- lar 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 bib- liography is to be used. Request blanks for 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 ihe National Library of Medicine is available upon request. Translators and Research Workers The Library does not provide translat- ing service, but will attempt to locate 6 existing translations or abstracts. It maintains a register of translators and research workers with whom private ar- rangements can be made. The Library 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 certain theses and pamphlets) published before 1801, together with material relating to them, is located at its History of Medicine Division, 11,000 Euclid Avenue at Adelbert Road, Cleve- land 6, Ohio. Special rules govern the use of material in this Division and correspondence 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. 7 Art Section The Art Section of the Library contains a wide range of woodcuts, etchings, caricatures, fine engravings, oil por- traits, photographs, and other non- clinical illustrations relating to medicine and the allied sciences. Reproductions (prints and copy negatives) of pictorial items in the collections, including lan- tern slides, are available at nominal cost. (See p. 4) Orders should be submitted 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 collection does not circulate, but films may be viewed in the Library on request. Publications 1. The Current List of Medical Lit- erature, a monthly publication of the 8 NATIONAL LIBRARY Of MEDICINE WASHINGTON, D. 0, Library, lists the contents of selected scientific journals currently received. A subject and author index is included with each issue, and a semiannual cu- mulation of the indexes is also furnished. The Current List of Medical Lit- erature will cease publication with volume 36, 1959. 2. Index Medicus and Cumulated Index Medicus. Beginning with the issue for January i960, the National Library of Medicine will publish a new monthly index to be called Index Medicus. The American Medical As- sociation will publish annual cumula- tions of the index to be known as Cumulated Index Medicus. Sub- scriptions to Index Medicus will be available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. at $20.00 a year. The Cumulated Index Med- icus will be sold by the American Medical Association, $35 North Dear- born Street, Chicago 10, Illinois. Price will be announced. 3. The National Library of Medicine Catalog contains the author and sub- ject records of books and serials cat- aloged by the Library from 1950 to date. It is issued in annual volumes, except that every fifth year a five-year 9 cumulated Catalog is published as a supplement to the Library of Congress Catalogs. The 1950-1954 Catalog (6 v.), pub- lished under the Library's former name as the Armed Forces Medical Library Catalog, is for sale by J. W. Edwards, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan. Price: $64.00 per set, f.o.b. Ann Arbor. The 1955-195 8 annual volumes are for sale by the Card Division, Library of Congress, Washington 25, D. C. Price: $17.50 per volume, plus 40 cents postage. The 1955-1959 cumulated Catalog (6 v.) will be published in the fall of i960. It will be sold by Judd and Detweiler, Inc., 1500 Eckington Place N.E., Wash- ington 2, D.C. Price: $60.00 per set, f.o.b. Washington, D.C. 4. Copies of the Library's mutilithed catalog cards are available only on a current subscription basis from the Card Division, Library of Congress. A sub- scription includes one copy of each card and is priced at two cents per card. 5. The National Library of Medicine Classification; a Scheme for the Shelf Arrangement of Books in the Field of Medicine and Its Related Sci- ences, 1956. This second edition of the Library's Classification is for sale by the Superintendent of Docu- 10 ments, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C, and is priced at $2.00 per copy. 6. 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 distrib- uted free upon request. 7. The Index-Catalogue of the Li- brary of the Surgeon General's Office is a publication of the National Library of Medicine. Fifty-eight vol- umes have been published since its in- ception in 1880; the final volume in the traditional form is Volume XI of the Fourth Series covering material indexed under the letters "MH-MN". Volume XI, which appeared in 1955, is available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, at $9.00 per copy. In addition, the section on "Military Medicine" and the "Sup- plementary List of Abbreviations for Serial Publications" in Volume XI have been made available as separate reprints. Copies of the Index-Catalogue are de- posited in many libraries and research institutions throughout the world. A microprint edition of the Index-Cata- logue is offered for sale by Readex Microprint Corporation, 100 Fifth Ave- 11 nue, New York City, at $75.00. A mon- ographic Supplement, derived from the files of unpublished entries remaining from the Index-Catalogue, is also in preparation. Volume One of this series, the first of three, which together will comprise the Fifth Series (and the last) of the Index-Catalogue of the Sur- geon General's Office will contain all the author and title entries. This vol- ume is due to appear in the fall of 1959 and will be available through the Super- intendent of Documents, U.S. Govern- ment Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. The price will be announced. 8. The Bibliography of Medical Re- views is an annual listing, by subject, of recent medical review articles. Vol- ume 4 for 1959 is available through the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Gov- ernment Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C, at $1.50 per copy. 9. Occasional bibliographies and other publications on subjects of current in- terest are issued and distributed free or at a nominal cost. Among those appear- ing in 1959 were Psychopharmaca, a Bibliography of Psychopharmacol- ogy ($1.50) and Film Reference Guide for Medicine and Allied Sciences ($1.00), the latter published in coop- eration with the Interdepartmental 12 Committee on Medical Training Aids. Earlier publications include Guide to Russian Medical Literature, 1958 (40 cents); Bibliography of Space Medicine, 1958; Staphylococcal In- fection 1958; and Cancer Chemo- therapy; a Bibliography of Agents, issued in 1956 as a supplement to the journal "Cancer Research." Publica- tions for which there is a charge should be ordered from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C; free pub- lications should be requested from the National Library of Medicine. A com- plete listing of the Library's publica- tions is available upon request. 13 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: I960 Letters requesting information about the Na- tional Library of Medicine and its services should be addressed to: The Director National Library of Medicine 7th Street and Independence Ave. SW. Washington 25, D.C.