Pacific Northwest Region

The National Library of Medicine is Expanding Access to Coronavirus Literature through PubMed Central®

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) of the National Institutes of Health is working on multiple fronts to aid in the COVID-19 response through new initiatives with the global publishing community and artificial intelligence researchers. NLM is expanding access to scientific papers on coronavirus for researchers, care providers, and the public, and for text-mining research. This work makes use of NLM’s PubMed Central® (PMC), a digital archive of peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences literature. PMC currently provides access to nearly 6 million full-text journal articles.

Farewell to PNR and Welcome to Region 5!

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has awarded a new five-year cooperative agreement grant to the University of Washington (UW) Health Sciences Library to lead the NNLM Regional Medical Library (RML) Region 5 serving a six-state region including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States. Region 5 is part of the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM), which will include 7 Regional Medical Libraries (RMLs) as of May 1, 2021.

The core mission of the NNLM is to improve access to the highest level of evidence-based health information, with an emphasis on reaching the most underserved communities. The NLM grant funds the UW RML’s Region 5 program Reaching More People in More Ways to advance data driven health, health equity and health literacy through community-driven outreach that equitably informs U.S. researchers, health professionals, librarians, educators, and the public about the NLM’s products, information services, funding, professional development, and training. The program also provides direct funding (grants) to regional partners to improve access through technology and provide training to equalize and enhance access to health information for everyone – from clinicians to patients and to the general public.

UW Health Sciences Library has hosted the RML for 5 states in the Pacific Northwest Region (AK, ID, MT, OR, and WA) since the program’s inception in 1968. The geography of the grant has largely remained unchanged in the last 53 years.

Beginning in May 2021, under the new redistributed geography of this grant, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon will be served by the NNLM Region 5 Regional Medical Library at the University of Washington Health Sciences Library; and Idaho and Montana will be served by the NNLM Region 4 Regional Medical Library at the University of Utah Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.

Region 5 (RML: University of Washington, Health Sciences Library) includes:

Alaska
California
Hawaii
Nevada
Oregon
Washington
U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States in the Pacific

Region 4 (RML: University of Utah, Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library) includes:

Arizona
Colorado
Idaho
Montana
New Mexico
North Dakota
South Dakota
Utah
Wyoming

We appreciate many years of partnership with libraries and organizations in Idaho and Montana and know you will be served well by our colleagues in Region 4!

Cathy Burroughs
Executive Director of Region 5