1836 Library of the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army (the present National Library of Medicine) established.
Around 1865 John Shaw Billings, MD, appointed to supervise Surgeon General's Library, which he developed into a national resource of biomedical literature. He served as director until 1895.
1879 First Issue of Index Medicus Published
1898 Association of Medical Librarians started by four librarians and four physicians in the office of the Philadelphia Medical Journal at the invitation of George M. Gould, M.D., editor of the journal.
1907 Association of Medical Librarians becomes the Medical Library Association
1922 January Library of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army) renamed Army Medical Library.
1933 Marcia C. Noyes, charter member of the association, is the first woman and the first non-physician to be elected president of MLA.
1952 April Army Medical Library renamed Armed Forces Medical Library.
1956 October 1 Act of Congress moved Armed Forces Medical Library to Public Health Service (PHS) and rechristened it the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
1964 January Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (
MEDLARS) became operational at NLM (this was the first automated version of Index Medicus, which later became Medline).
1965 October 22 Medical Library Assistance Act gave NLM responsibility of helping the nation's medical libraries through a grant program, and created the Regional Medical Library Network (now the
National Network of Libraries of Medicine). Also, built, expanded, and constructed more than eighty-six medical school libraries, representing the greatest expansion in the history of medical school libraries.
1968 NLM became a component of NIH (National Institutes of Health).
1971 October MEDLINE ("MEDLARS Online") was initiated to provide online access to a subset of references in the MEDLARS database.
1988 November 5 National Center for Biotechnology Information was created by Congress as a national resource for molecular biology information.
1988 A new credentialing program, the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP) is established.
1997 June 26 Web-based access to NLM's
MEDLINE became available free of charge via Pubmed.
1998 October MedlinePlus created to provide access to consumer health information.
