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National Library of Medicine (tool)

RRID:SCR_011446

NLM collects, organizes, and makes available biomedical science information to scientists, health professionals, and the public. The Library's Web-based databases, including PubMed/Medline and MedlinePlus, are used extensively around the world. NLM conducts and supports research in biomedical communications; creates information resources for molecular biology, biotechnology, toxicology, and environmental health; and provides grant and contract support for training, medical library resources, and biomedical informatics and communications research. Celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2011, the National Library of Medicine (NLM), in Bethesda, Maryland, is a part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Since its founding in 1836 as the library of the U.S. Army Surgeon General, NLM has played a pivotal role in translating biomedical research into practice. It is the world's largest biomedical library and the developer of electronic information services that deliver trillions of bytes of data to millions of users every day. Scientists, health professionals, and the public in the United States and around the globe search the Library's online information resources more than 1 billion times each year. The Library is open to all and has many services and resources for scientists, health professionals, historians, and the general public. NLM has over 17 million books, journals, manuscripts, audiovisuals, and other forms of medical information on its shelves, making it the largest health-science library in the world. In today's increasingly digital world, NLM carries out its mission of enabling biomedical research, supporting health care and public health, and promoting healthy behavior by: * Acquiring, organizing, and preserving the world's scholarly biomedical literature; * Providing access to biomedical and health information across the country in partnership with the 5,800-member National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM); * Serving as a leading global resource for building, curating and providing sophisticated access to molecular biology and genomic information, including those from the Human Genome Project and NIH Common Fund; * Creating high-quality information services relevant to toxicology and environmental health, health services research, and public health; * Conducting research and development on biomedical communications systems, methods, technologies, and networks and information dissemination and utilization among health professionals, patients, and the general public; * Funding advanced biomedical informatics research and serving as the primary supporter of pre- and post-doctoral research training in biomedical informatics at 18 U.S. universities.

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