As director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s
largest medical library, Don Lindberg digitized its holdings to make them
freely available to scientists, physicians and laypeople around the world. All of us benefit from his vision and
generosity of spirit.
He
fundamentally changed the way biomedical knowledge and health information is
collected, organized, and made available for public use. “Lindberg envisioned
the future of computers in medicine a generation before it happened,” said
Robert A. Logan, a former senior staff member at the library who worked closely
with him.
One
of our readers, Virginia Tanji, a respected medical librarian, personally worked with Lindberg. She writes:
Dr.
Lindberg was a visionary. A lot of librarians were upset when he was appointed
Director of the National Library of Medicine because he was not a librarian,
but he turned out to be the best person for the job.
In
1976, when I started working as a librarian, only medical librarians who went
to the National Library of Medicine for hands-on training were allowed to apply
for accounts that allowed them to search MEDLINE for a fee. Today, thanks to Lindberg’s vision, anyone on
our planet can freely search PubMed-MEDLINE and even have access to many of the
articles in full-text!!
What
has impressed me in thinking about Dr. Lindberg is how he always enlisted the
very best professionals to implement the wide range of projects successfully
undertaken by NLM under his leadership.
That strikes me as the hallmark of a true leader.
One of Lindberg’s last projects at the NLM, Native People's Concepts of Health and
Illness,
explores the interconnectedness of wellness, illness, and cultural life for
Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians.
You can access the video production of NATIVE VOICES, If you have 3 minutes, view Lindberg's introduction to that exhibit.
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