In This Issue:
 NLM
Rewarded with Hammer
Rockefeller
Telemedicine Event
Frances
Howard Retirement
Chinese
Art Exhibit
Becky
Lyon Named Deputy Assoc. Director of Library Operations
Cravedi
Named Liaison Officer
2000
Budget Announced
Long
Range Plan Meeting
Son
of MEDLINEplus
Rodbell
Archive Added To Profiles In Science
New
NLM Associates
Dr.
Bond Named Board Chair
Altemus
and Detweiler Win Award for "Frankenstein"
NLM
Honor Awards
Dr.
Cassedy Logs 50 Years
In Every Issue:
Names
in the News
Products
and Publications
NLM
in Print
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NLM's New Tools Rewarded with Hammer
Innovative Programs Win Vice President's
Award
NLM has received the prestigious Hammer Award for a series of
major improvements in its information services, including making its
popular MEDLINE database of journal article references and abstracts
free and easier for the general public to use. 
Photo: In all its spartan splendor, NLM's Hammer
Award.
The award, given by the Vice President's National Partnership for
Reinventing Government, goes to federal agencies that show real
innovation by: (1) putting customers first; (2) empowering
employees; (3) cutting red tape; or (4) achieving results American
citizens care about. Former chair of the NLM Board of Regents,
Tenley E. Albright, MD, who nominated the Library for the award in
May, presented it to NLM Director Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg at the
September 29th Board meeting.
The Library's 14-member Systems Reinvention Team, operating under
a relaxed set of administrative strictures, set out with a broad
range of goals and succeeded boldly.
In its letter announcing NLM's award, the National Partnership
noted, "This team put 11 million mainframe articles and references
on client-servers and made custom-built retrieval software that
allows anyone to conveniently access it.
The team placed more medical information online, improved its
format, reduced processing time dramatically, put environmental
health and hazardous substance information online, made the Visible
Humans available, provided mapping of the human genome, and
introduced 'Profiles in Science' [NLM's web-based file containing
the laboratory notebooks and personal papers of the some of the 20th
century's greatest scientists]. The availability of such medical
information has and will change medicine forever."
According to Systems Reinvention Committee Chair Kent A. Smith,
the Library's Deputy Director, the reinvention program involved the
efforts of hundreds of Library staff in all divisions. The Team's
approach was based on several strategies: the Internet would be used
for delivering services; commercially available software would be
used whenever practical; industry standards would be adhered to so
that NLM's services would interoperate smoothly with other
information systems; and, through forms and surveys, NLM's users
would have a say in the design of the services they receive.
In the case of MEDLINE, NLM also made one additional improvement:
the registration and search fees were removed. In the words of NLM
Director Lindberg, "The increased results in usage were dramatic.
Before the systems reinvention, NLM recorded 7 million searches of
MEDLINE in one year [FY 1997]. The current rate is about 18 million
searches every month, or 215 million searches per year."
The Hammer Award is the Vice President's answer to yesterday's
government and its much-publicized $400 hammer, bought through red
tape-choked procurement policies. The award itself consists of a $6
hammer, festooned with ribbon and mounted in an aluminum frame.
Members of NLM's award-winning Systems Reinvention Team are:
- Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, NLM Director, Team Leader
- Kent A. Smith, NLM Deputy Director, Chair, Systems Reinvention
Committee
- Edwin P. Sequeira, Systems Reinvention Coordinator
- Joseph W. Hutchins, Systems Reinvention Technical Systems
Director
- Michael J. Ackerman, PhD, Lister Hill National Center for
Biomedical Communications (LHNCBC)
- Betsy L. Humphreys, Division of Library Operations
- Lawrence C. Kingsland, III, PhD, LHNCBC
- David J. Lipman, MD, National Center for Biotechnology
Information (NCBI)
- Eve-Marie LaCroix, Library Operations
- Alexa T. McCray, PhD, LHNCBC
- Dianne E. McCutcheon, Library Operations
- James M. Ostell, PhD, NCBI
- Harold M. Schoolman, MD, Office of the Director
- Melvin L. Spann, PhD, Division of Specialized Information
Services
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