PANEL ON NATIONAL LIBRARIES' INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

International Programs of the National Library of Medicine
 

Richard K.C. Hsieh

[Former] Director, International Programs
National Library of Medicine
Bethesda, MD, USA
hsieh@lhc.nih.nlm.gov

National Library of Medicine has an active international program that is the ex-tension of the Library's many domestic responsibilities. I share with you here the essence of NLM's International Programs by way of three personal experiences.

The foremost important experience is to respond to requests to access NLM databases outside of the United States. For the access of MEDLARS from another country, NLM requires that a qualified public institution must be first nominated by the country's highest health official (e.g., the Minister of Public Health). An international MEDLARS Center will then be established in that public institution, one who is determined to be willing and capable of providing technical and administrative support to all health personnel in that country. That support will include fiduciary support, MEDLARS search training, document delivery, and so on. NLM has successfully negotiated MEDLARS agreements with public institutions in 17 countries and with two international organizations under whose auspices many international health personnel can make rapid access to the computerized NLM MEDLARS databases. The two most recent interna-tional MEDLARS Center agreements were signed with Korea and Israel. In these countries, MEDLARS users are using the Grateful Med (GM) through the Internet for access databases from the NLM computer in Bethesda.

One interesting experience on behalf of the International Programs is the reinvention of an administrative and technical collaboration with the Pan Ameri-can Health Organization (PAHO). In 1969, PAHO, an intergovernmental health organization, began its collaboration with NLM on MEDLARS by establishing a regional information center, the BIREME, in Brazil. In 1989, PAHO amended its leasing agreement with NLM to provide online access to MEDLARS data-bases from Argentina, Chile, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. In 1990, recognizing that the high cost of international communication services inhibits many health professionals in the Latin American countries to search NLM databases, NLM collaborated with PAHO and the University of Chile to develop a gateway sytem called BITNIS, which allowed health professionals to use e-mail to conduct MEDLARS searches from these countries. Briefly, a MEDLARS search using BITNIS is initiated using NLM software Grateful Med. The search commands created by Grateful Med are transmitted to NLM through the Internet network. The retrieval obtained from the NLM computer are transmitted back to the ori-ginator through the Internet; and Grateful Med is used again to edit and present search results. The only difference between using GM instead of BITNIS is that one uses e-mail instead of an online network for communication. In 1992, the improved BITNIS gateway software was ported from a personal computer (PC) to a Sun Spartan Workstation. This improvement increased the BITNIS through-put and added many new features to support users in all 38 PAHO countries. Today there are more than 150 institutional codes with a daily average of 25 searches being logged onto the system.

Another recent international experience has been to provide biomedical scientists in the former Soviet Union access to American colleagues and compu-terized scientific information. This project is sponsored by a contract from the U.S. Department of State and whose goal is to improve the status of medical information in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania (among other countries) through major medical libraries. At least one major medical library in these countries has a PC, e-mail subscription, or MEDLARS access codes for international health communication by scientists. With e-mail, one can use BITNIS to search MEDLARS databases and corres-pond with American colleagues.

NLM attracts many international visitors each year. To receive and give briefings to international visitors, including medical librarians, health profes-sionals, and government officials is the responsibility of the International Pro-gram. Many of these visitors are responsible for medical, scientific and technical information in their own countries. Their interest in NLM is more than cursory, and they are always officially received and provided with relevant aspects of NLM operations and research. In 1994, a large number of significant events at NLM involved the use of the Internet and participation in the U.S. High Perfor-mance Computer and Communications (HPCC) initiative. The HPCC initiative will result in powerful computers that can store and analyze biomedical scientific data and extend high-speed computer networks to create an electronic community of health professionals. Over these high-speed digital networks scientists can quickly collaborate and share new findings, and practicing health professionals can instantly access medical data banks and exchange clinical data for the effi-cient care of patients.

Major biomedical advances such as human genome and biotechnology in the 1990s and beyond will depend on and benefit from the evolving medical infor-matics. The international community of health professional is aware of this advancement and will demand more timely information exchange (and communi-cation) to meet the needs of their research, education, and practices. International Programs of the National Library of Medicine is proud to promote the interna-tional exchange of biomedical information.
 
 

Q & A_________________

DISCUSSIONS
 
 

[Yakov Shraiberg]

Thank you very much

[Unidentified]

With respect to the programs in Latin America, can you describe the relation-ships, if any, with BIREME?

[Richard Hsieh]

BIREME is the regional medical library of the Pan American Health Organiz-tion. NLM has an interesting concept domestically; that is, the regional medical library network concept to support medical libraries for interlibrary loans. We recommend the same concept to BIREME to serve the Latin American countries.

PAHO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NLM for BIREME to serve as an International MEDLARS Center. BIREME leases a subset of MED-LINE for its service to users, and also provides document delivery service to health professionals. For many years, BIREME depends on an older computer to run batch searches of MEDLINE services and use post offices to deliver docu-ments. However, since the arrival of the current director in 1990, BIREME has developed CD-ROM application, and is moving ahead to do more new things. The potential of BIREME is definitely there.

[Lisbeth Levey]

I just want to comment briefly on the use of BITNIS; this is the software used in doing e-mail searches in Africa. It is being used now in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Kenya. The librarian of the University of Nairobi Medical School is going to write an article on her experience in the use of this in the next issue of our News-letter (AAAS). We are just delighted to have BITNIS in Africa.

[Richard Hsieh]

That is exactly what I meant. I am delighted to hear others speak to this issue first. I think the issue here is more than to question the value of an information technology. One needs to know the capacity of the information technology in serving more than just a few people. We need to apply the information techno-logy in these countries to help a growing number of people who are in need but deprived of accessing information and knowledge.

[Julie Kagan]

I am Julie Kagan, formerly the Librarian for the International Science Founda-tion. Unfortunately I do not have an opportunity to speak today. I have heard many interesting things, and I guess I could have spoken from a different view-point; that is, basically, the technical implementation of something which we are doing for the International Science Foundation. As a person with a strong com-puter background, and library and information services as well, we will explore the use of the computer for interesting things. But, in particular with libraries, the Foundation has involved in the acquisition and distribution of some 120 foreign journals titles to over 60 libraries in Russia, and other libraries in the former Soviet Union.

[Don Riggs]

Richard, can you tell us what you are doing with digitizing collections and shar-ing with other libraries?

[Richard Hsieh]

I am trying to limit my discussions on NLM's International Programs today, because I cannot do justice to other NLM research and operations by giving insufficient and accurate description.

Dr. Lindberg, Director of NLM, was asked by the White House Office of Science and Technology to be in charge of the Coordinating Office of the HPCC (High Performance Computing and Communication). He is working with federal agencies on HPCC activities and also private industry on HPCC activities. HPCC is focused on the digitizing, transmission and analysis of text, documents, audio and video images information. Under Dr. Lindberg's leadership, NLM scientists and engineers have for many years been doing research and development on the digitizing of biomedical information. For example, NLM has supported projects for the capture, storage, processing, online retrieval, transmission, and display of both biomedical journals and medical imagery. NLM is also doing research on image techniques that support medical educational package employing digitized x-ray.