Linking Biomedical Information Resources: Update from The National Library of Medicine

Betsy Humphreys
Associate Director for Library Operations
National Library of Medicine

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has developed new tools for linking its major genetic data and biomedical literature resources so that users can more efficiently move between sequence databases, bibliographic descriptions, and full text of articles. In December 2002, PubMed Central (PMC), NLMís digital archive of life sciences journal literature, was integrated into the Entrez retrieval system, which supports access to PubMed, online books, the sequence databases, a taxonomy database, and more. Entrezís LinkOut feature provides external links to a variety of relevant Web resources at more than 750 external organizations around the world. In a truly unique collaboration over the last two years, nearly 500 libraries (academic, research, and health care) from 25 countries have provided external links to PubMed. Because of the unique nature of LinkOut, users searching a centralized database, such as PubMed, can be provided seamless access to articles at their own local libraries.