The NLM traveling exhibitions, available free of charge, present inspiring stories about history, society, and medicine. Drawn from NLM, they connect visitors to trusted health information resources.
NLM Traveling Exhibitions help:
- connect your community to NLM offerings like MedlinePlus and PubMed.
- publicize your institution through programming and activities.
- establish community partnerships and share NLM health information resources with partner institutions.
- foster health literacy in your community.
For questions please contact the NLM Traveling Exhibition Services team NLMTravelingExhibits@nih.gov.
Future Call for Request submissions will be accepted when a Call for Requests is announced via our listserv and live. Please subscribe to our listserv for more information to come.
More about NNLM
Reach out to the NNLM office in your region for partnership or more information.
NLM Traveling Exhibitions by Title
Learn about a wide range of topics among all exhibition titles from the NLM History of the Medicine Division and available through NNLM’s calls for requests.
Funding Opportunities
Some regions may provide funding or other support for traveling exhibitions. Learn more about funding from the NNLM.
The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) in the Engagement Branch makes available a selection of Traveling Exhibition titles through a Call for Requests.
The overview of request and booking process for NLM Traveling Exhibition as follows:
- NNLM announces and opens a Call for Requests for 7-8 exhibition titles along with an online request form during a 3-week period;
- During the open Call period, the online request form is available to submit requests;
- Request are entered in a lottery for selecting booking; and
- Bookings are confirmed when selected host venues returned signed booking agreements.
NLM offers high-quality, reliable biomedical and health information through electronic resources.
- Plan seasonal programming or National Health Observance events around NLM health information resources:
- For Talk to Your Doctor Month (August) or World AIDS Day (December), partner with a local research hospital to use ClinicalTrials.gov to share accessible information about what clinical trials are, the range of ways to participate, and what questions to ask when considering enrolling in HIV/AIDS-related clinical trials.
- For Rare Disease Day (February 28) or National Public Health Week (first week in April), explore a story of scientific discovery in NLM’s Profiles in Science. Have participants write or create art about who they look up to and why in the history of health and health care.
- Support library career development using NLM health information resources:
- Devote a series of library staff professional development sessions to how to use NLM's medical informatics resources to support health IT and researchers.
- Host an information session, application reviews, or mock interviews for people from underrepresented groups applying for the NLM Associate Fellowship Program for Librarians or the NLM Intramural Research Training Program.
- Improve community health with easy–to–access health information resources:
- Choose a free health-related e-book or get an NNLM Reading Club kit for your next book club.
- Invite nursing students or local nurses from across your region to a training course on Using PubMed in Evidence-Based Practice and introduce pre-formulated PubMed special queries.
- Develop and market a health information portal on your website with easily accessible links to multilingual health information in the most common languages in your community.
The public program templates which accompany exhibition titles are planning guides for how to develop programs and activities using trusted and reliable NLM resources around NLM exhibitions. Each template includes program objectives, related NLM health information, program outlines, and additional resources. Host venues, as well as others, are welcome to use them as-is or modify them according to community needs and interest.
- Zine Workshop: Creating Personal Health Narratives (Care and Custody) highlights NLM resources on mental health and healthcare topics to guide participants in creating zines that express their personal mental health narratives.
- Reel-iable Health Information Film Challenge (Making a World of Difference and Rashes to Research) outlines how to host filmmaking contents for creating public service announcements about immunization with selected NLM health information resources.
- Trusted Information from Trusted Sources: NLM's MedlinePlus for Community Health Workers (For All the People) provides community health partners an overview of MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus Español, as an introduction to MedlinePlus’s multilingual health information resources. It also includes considerations for offering continuing education credits to the participants.
- In Our Own Voices: Exploring Immigrant Community Perspectives in NLM Resources (Outside/Inside) sets a journal club for health sciences students and faculty with two selected workshop proceedings from NCBI Bookshelf, online resource from the NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information.
- Train-the-Trainer Workshop: Supporting Communities Advancing Health (This Lead Is Killing Us) uses lead poisoning as an example to introduce librarians and health information navigators to multiple NLM health information resources including professional development opportunities.
Institutions do the following as part of hosting NLM traveling exhibitions:
- Display the exhibition in a safe, secure environment out of direct sunlight.
- Make the exhibition available to the public free of charge.
- Complete and return a Traveling Exhibition Condition Report within one week of receiving the exhibition.
- Ensure safety and health of your community by following CDC guidance on your local COVID-19 and other public health activities, as part of hosting the exhibition.
- Arrange and pay for outgoing shipping to the next host venue via a trackable service ($200-$1,000 estimated cost).
- Complete and submit a Traveling Exhibition Host Venue Report within two weeks of closing.
Exhibition flyers
Please see PDFs for the itineraries for the following titles. Current as of January 14, 2025.
- AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health
- "And there's the humor of it": Shakespeare and the four humors
- Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries: African Americans in Civil War Medicine
- Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health
- Confronting Violence: Improving Women's Lives
- Confronting Violence: Improving Women's Lives/Enfrentando La Violencia: mejorando la vida de las mujeres
- Every Necessary Care and Attention: George Washington and Medicine
- Fire and Freedom: Food and Enslavement in Early America
- For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform
- For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform/Para todo el pueblo: Un siglo de acción ciudadana en la reforma de la atención de la salud
- From DNA to Beer: Harnessing Nature in Medicine and Industry
- Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature
- Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature/Frankenstein: Penetrando en los secretos de la naturaleza
- Graphic Medicine: Ill-Conceived and Well-Drawn!
- Life and Limb: The Toll of the American Civil War
- Making a World of Difference: Stories About Global Health
- Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons
- Outside/Inside: Immigration, Migration, and Health Care in the United States
- Physician Assistants: Collaboration and Care
- Pick Your Poison: Intoxicating Pleasures and Medical Prescription
- Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection
- Politics of Yellow Fever in Alexander Hamilton's America
- Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy
- Rashes to Research: Scientists and Parents Confront the 1964 Rubella Epidemic
- Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine in Harry Potter's World
- Rise, Serve, Lead! America's Women Physicians
- Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture
- Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture/Sobrevivir y Prosperar: Sida, Politica y Cultura
- Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: The Story of Aspirin Revisited
- The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
- This Lead is Killing Us: A History of Citizens Fighting Lead Poisoning in Their Communities