NLM Names Associate Director

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National Library of Medicine Names Associate Director

(Bethesda, Md.) --Donald A. B. Lindberg, M.D., director of the National Library of Medicine, today announced that Betsy L. Humphreys has been named NLM Associate Director for Library Operations. This position oversees all public and technical processing services at the National Library of Medicine, including the operation of the reading rooms, reference and customer services, cataloging and indexing, MEDLINE and other bibliographic online databases, the Index Medicus, interlibrary lending, preservation, and the historical collections.

"I am especially pleased to be able to appoint someone who has spent her entire career at the National Library of Medicine," said Lindberg. "She has risen through the ranks and handled in superior fashion a succession of increasingly responsible positions." She served as Deputy Associate Director for Library Operations since 1984, and held the concurrent position of Assistant NLM Director for Health Services Research Information since 1993.

Ms. Humphreys, who came to the NLM in 1973, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Smith College and has a Masters of Library Science degree from the University of Maryland. She is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals. Her first NLM assignments were in the serials automation and processing area and she was subsequently appointed chief of the Technical Services Division. As Deputy Associate Director of Library Operations, she chaired the NLM Preservation Task Force, which led to the establishment of a Preservation and Collection Management Section and the Library's successful campaign to increase use of acid-free paper in the biomedical literature. Among her more recent responsibilities have been overseeing the establishment of the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology, directing the Unified Medical Language System project, and representing NLM and NIH on Federal health data standardization initiatives.

Library Operations, which Ms. Humphreys now heads, includes four divisions (Bibliographic Services Division, History of Medicine Division, Public Services Division, and Technical Services Division), the Medical Subject Headings Section, the National Network Office, and the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology. Together, these programs account for approximately half of the National Library of Medicine's staff and intramural budget. Other responsibilities of the Library are the Extramural (grant) Programs, the Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Program, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, and the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications.

The National Library of Medicine, a part of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the world's largest library of the health sciences. It has an extensive Web site at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/.\

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Last updated: 29 April 2004
First published: 25 May 1999
Permanence level: Permanent: Stable Content