In August, Patricia Flatley Brennan, PhD, MSN, took the helm of the National Library of Medicine. As director, Brennan oversees the largest biomedical library in the world, with data available to both professional and lay audiences. Users can access a wide range of health information, on a multitude of topics, adding up to over 28 million items. Millions of users around the world search NLM’s massive collections billions of times each year. Brennan spoke with The Nation’s Health about the value of NLM as it enters its third century of service to the public.
How can the general public benefit from the National Library of Medicine’s archives?
The National Library of Medicine has a long history of making resources available to the general public. Anyone can access the Library of Medicine, look at our literature and databases, and even look at some of our large data storage, like genome storage.
This is a very large program of outreach that helps make our resources more useful to many people. For example, it teaches people how to effectively search to find information that could be helpful to them if they’re facing a health concern or wondering about a health problem. In our Clinicaltrials.gov data, we have a summary of over 240,000 clinical trials that are organized by the nature of the problem (and) the location of the trial for the person…(The) ClinicalTrials.gov database allows people to find clinical trials that might be relevant to them or people they care about who have health concerns. We also publish a magazine called NIH MedlinePlus.
We also provide a license that’s making health information available to people who have low literacy, or at least a first language that’s not English.
Our Specialized Information Services works on an everyday basis…They could help (people access) health care, know how to manage their water to make sure they don’t get it contaminated (or) understand how to store that supply during a time when there’s no electricity. It’s designed to make the information that’s in our warehouse, in our massive data sources, millions and millions of articles, accessible through the public use.
What about research investigators?
We have started a new…funding announcement, (which) is a way for investigators to fund their research ideas. And we provide support for them to actually carry out the research idea.
Personal Health Libraries…is a funding announcement that (helps) make the large-scale data services…more available to lay people.
That’s beyond having access to the general instruction that we used to have, from tools that can help you interpret your genetic structure, or maybe link to articles that are more accessible and understandable to a lay person. And this funding announcement made it possible for research.
How is the National Library of Medicine working with the Precision Medicine Initiative?
I have a very close relationship with Eric (Dishman) of the Precision Medicine Initiative. Eric and his team are working very hard to recruit people to what we call the Precision Medicine Cohort. We at the National Library of Medicine have a couple of ways we hope to be working with them, and probably the most important one is our National Network of Libraries of Medicine. The National Library of Medicine has developed a network of libraries of medicine. And we’re 6,400 strong. This means that, wherever people live in this country, we have a touchpoint with them. So, with these 6,400 libraries, there may be a public library in a community, it might be a hospital library. It might be their library at their local university. They have been organized into nine regions, and they have access to information we have.
We provide training for the librarians in how to judge databases or how to communicate with people.
We expect to work with the Precision Medicine Initiative by providing a point of reference…where a person can go to get trusted health information about the results that they may have learned about.
We only have a couple of other ways that we’re working with the Precision Medicine Initiative, including making sure that the terminology that we use to index the literature (is) available to the people who are building the database.
What are your strategic plan priorities as the National Library of Medicine enters its third century?
We (date) our history back to 1836, when a field surgeon in the Army requested funds to buy medical textbooks for a field hospital. The National Library of Medicine has been the foundation for discovery. We first of all collect and compile the literature. We provide access to your effective indexing system. And then there’s the digital evolution…We began to make the information available over the internet.
As the National Library of Medicine moves into the third century, we expect to make greater use of official basic tools of new kinds of analytics that will help us understand and develop new insights from these large datasets, and also to use our experience and our insight as librarians to ensure the privacy not only of the person whose data may be contributed to these large datasets, but also be investigated, too and to using the datasets to begin exploring new ideas.
Data privacy is becoming increasingly important, so how can information in the National Library of Medicine be used more ethically?
When you talk about that, about the health information, I think it might be the concern of how we could use data in this, a certain lack of care. Or that people make decisions that are in value sets. And this is a question that talks about the importance of libraries not simply holding information, but training people about how to use information. Often when the question of access is raised when it comes to health information, people are talking about patients’ privacy and the individual’s right. And because we don’t store individual patient data at the National Library of Medicine right now, the ethical issues are a little bit different for us.
Brennan
Why is the National Library of Medicine so important to public health?
I think probably the most important thing is that we have a strong commitment to public health research information data. Tox Town is a repository of information about toxic exposure. We also have a resource called TOXNET, a suite of databases that has information on over 400,000 different chemicals. And we have a website for health service research and public health information programs. And this is research informally of the National Information Center for Health Services Research. NICHSR provides outside links to the health services research and public health partnerships that make it possible for a local public health community to find quick information about things such as Indian health or perhaps to provide help with training resources about toxicology. We view our partnership in public health…as being one of our critical target areas.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
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- How can the general public benefit from the National Library of Medicine’s archives?
- What about research investigators?
- How is the National Library of Medicine working with the Precision Medicine Initiative?
- What are your strategic plan priorities as the National Library of Medicine enters its third century?
- Data privacy is becoming increasingly important, so how can information in the National Library of Medicine be used more ethically?
- Why is the National Library of Medicine so important to public health?