NLM Vision Chat

Transcript: http://bit.ly/1RUWf77 

National Library of Medicine vision chat

Thursday, July 2, 2015

9:00 pm Eastern/6:00 pm Pacific time

#medlibs Twitter chat

Led by Chris Shaffer

In response to the retirement of Dr. Don Lindberg, longtime director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Francis Collins appointed an NLM Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) of NIH. The Working Group presented its report to the ACD on Thursday, June 11, 2015. The Working Group was charged to review the current NLM and articulate a strategic vision for the NLM to ensure that it remains an international leader in biomedical and health information. Membership represented a broad group of stakeholders, from librarians to patient advocates to publishers to informatics. The final report included six recommendations, each composed of several sub-recommendations.

• RECOMMENDATION #1. NLM must continually evolve to remain a leader in assimilating and disseminating accessible and authoritative biomedical research findings and trusted health information to the public, healthcare professionals, and researchers worldwide.
• RECOMMENDATION #2. NLM should lead efforts to support and catalyze open science, data sharing, and research reproducibility, striving to promote the concept that biomedical information and its transparent analysis are public goods.
• RECOMMENDATION #3. NLM should be the intellectual and programmatic epicenter for data science at NIH and stimulate its advancement throughout biomedical research and application.
• RECOMMENDATION #4. NLM should strengthen its role in fostering the future generation of professionals in biomedical informatics, data science, library sciences, and related disciplines through sustained and focused training efforts.
• RECOMMENDATION #5. NLM should maintain, preserve, and make accessible the nation’s historical efforts in advancing biomedical research and medicine, thereby ensuring that this legacy is both safe and accessible for long-term use.
  Shared by Jeffrey Reznick of NLM, Chief of the History of Medicine Division (@jeffreysreznick)
• NLM History of Medicine Division website and Circulating Now blog
• Embracing the Future as Stewards of the Past (PMC Article) 
• Wellcome & NLM: 150 years of biomedical journals online by 2017 (News)
• RECOMMENDATION #6. New NLM leadership should evaluate what talent, resources, and organizational structures are required to ensure NLM can fully achieve its mission and best allocate its resources.

The ACD forwarded the report without revision to Francis Collins, who accepted it and immediately appointed a search committee for the new Director of NLM.

While there is much to discuss in the report and its recommendations, the big ticket items are NLM roles in supporting and promoting open science, the move of the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) program into NLM, increased training for librarians and other information professionals, and preservation of the historic record.

Charge: http://acd.od.nih.gov/nlm.htm

Roster: http://acd.od.nih.gov/nlmroster.htm

Report: http://acd.od.nih.gov/reports/Report-NLM-06112015-ACD.pdf

Presentation: http://acd.od.nih.gov/reports/Report-NLM-06112015-slides.pdf

Search Committee: https://www.dropbox.com/s/24ouayrlmmpwm01/Screenshot%202015-06-11%2009.54.38.png?dl=0

Chris Shaffer, a member of the NLM Working Group, will discuss the process, recommendations, and his excitement about the brave new world of the National Library of Medicine in the 21st century.