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House Report 108-188 - DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATION BILL, 2004
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
The Committee provides $316,040,000 for the National Library of Medicine (NLM), which is $15,905,000 above the fiscal year 2003 comparable level and the same as the budget request.
Mission.--The National Library of Medicine collects, organizes, disseminates, and preserves biomedical literature in all forms, regardless of country of origin, language, or historical period. The Library's collection is widely available; it may be consulted at the NLM facility on the NIH campus; items may be requested on interlibrary loan; and the extensive NLM bibliographic databases may be searched online by health professionals around the world. NLM has a program of outreach to acquaint health professions with available NLM services. The Library also is mandated to conduct research into biomedical communications and biotechnology; to award grants in support of health science libraries and medical informatics research and training; and to create specialized information services in such areas as health services research, environmental health, AIDS, hazardous substances, and toxicology.
Outreach.--The Committee encourages NLM to continue its outreach activities aimed at educating health care professionals and the general public about the library's products and services, in coordination with medical librarians and other health information specialists.
PubMed Central.--The Committee commends NLM for its leadership in developing PubMed Central, an electronic online repository for life science articles. Because of the high level of expertise health information specialists have in the organization, collection, and dissemination of medical information, the Committee believes that health sciences librarians have a key role to play in the further development of PubMed Central. The Committee encourages NLM to work with the medical library community regarding issues related to copyright, fair use, peer-review and classification of information on PubMed Central.
Minority health.--The Committee encourages NLM to enhance its support of annual conferences sponsored by the minority health professions community designed to foster increased interest among minority students in the fields of biomedical science and bio-informatics.
Clinical vocabulary standards.--The Committee notes the contribution of NLM to the development of standardized clinical data vocabularies that play a key role in improving interoperability of medical information systems. The committee supports NLM's efforts to expand the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to enable it to serve as a major vehicle for facilitating the exchange of clinical health information. Through common standards, patient care will be improved, errors will be reduced, and the communication of health information among disparate health care systems will be greatly enhanced.
Restrictions on access to research data.--The Committee is concerned by reports that there has been a significant change in the availability of research data internationally and a dramatic rise in medical research data subscription costs. NLM is encouraged to examine how the consolidation of for-profit biomedical research publishers, with their increased subscription charges, has restricted access to vital research information to not-for-profit libraries. The Committee would like a report by March 1, 2004, about potential remedies to ensure that taxpayer-funded research remains in the public domain and steps that can be taken to alleviate this restrictive trend in information technology.
Bioethics literature- As Congress and other Federal and state decision makers contemplate important policy decisions in the field of bioethics, the Committee commends NLM for its support of the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) and the Bioethics Information Retrieval (BIR) Project. The NRCBL and BIR Project have created comprehensive interdisciplinary information resources which serve as models for bioethics research centers worldwide. The Committee is aware that the NLM is undertaking a review of how it manages bioethics research materials. As that process moves forward, the Committee would like to be kept fully informed about that review.
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