May 21, 2001
University of Washington Health Sciences Library awarded $6.65 million contract by the National Library of Medicine
The University of Washington Health Sciences Library has been awarded a new five-year contract by the National Library of Medicine to serve as the Regional Medical Library for the Pacific Northwest Region, as part of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.
The $6.65 million contract will support basic national medical library services as well as a new national Outreach Evaluation Resource Center. These will operate out of the UW Health Sciences Library and serve the states of Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. Dr. Sherrilynne Fuller, director of the Health Sciences Libraries and head of the UW School of Medicine Division of Biomedical and Health Informatics, is the program director. Neil Rambo, associate director of the Health Sciences Libraries, is the program administrator.
The national network works to equalize and enhance access to health sciences information throughout the United States through eight regional medical libraries. The goal is to provide access to accurate and up-to-date information for health professionals, patients, their families and the general public, no matter where they live. The system places special emphasis on reaching under-served populations to reduce health disparities.
The Pacific Northwest regional library has a long history of providing health information to rural health-care providers and under-served populations. These connections are the means through which care providers, public health workers, public librarians, teachers, health advocacy groups and community- or faith-based organizations can use online health information to serve their communities.
The National Library of Medicine produces some of the highest quality health information resources on the Web. They include the MEDLINE/PubMed database of 11 million citations to biomedical journal articles; the MEDLINEplus consumer health information service; and ClinicalTrials.gov, which provides current information about clinical research studies.
Information about the National Network of Libraries of Medicine and the Regional Medical Libraries can be found at http://nnlm.gov. The National Library of Medicine, a component of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the world’s largest library of the health sciences. Information about all NLM programs and services is at http://www.nlm.nih.gov.
