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Author: Cummings, Martin Marc, 1920-2011
Title: Information Retrieval Systems: Current Status, 1968
Occasion: Presented at the Intra-American Documentation Conference, Bogota, Colombia. Co-presenter was Mary E. Corning, Special Assistant to the Director, NLM.
MMC Commentary: There has been a longstanding interest by NLM in the need for improved library services in Latin America. This interest was also recognized by the Pan-American Health Organization. Several years after Dr. Mary Corning spoke, the NLM was invited to assist the Pan-American Health Organization in the creation of a regional medical library. The Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil was chosen as the site for this development. I worked on the PAHO project together with my counterpart, a pediatrician, [Mauricio] Martins da Silva. I traveled to Brazil 8 or 9 times and usually stayed between 3 to 5 days working on the regional library project. I have been asked if there were major obstacles, to which I would answer that there were no major obstacles when the regional library was built. There were challenges from the fact that the library was built in a Portuguese-speaking country, but that obstacle was easily overcome. After several years, a highly successful regional library was activated and continues to serve the medical information needs of Latin America. I received a medal that says "Republica de Chile al Dr. Martin M. Cummings" that was given to me during my National Library of Medicine years by the Office of the President of Chile in recognition for the work I did with the planning and designing of the regional library of PAHO. I was also given the Abraham Horowitz Award primarily for my work with PAHO.
Subject terms:
National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
Access to Information
Computer Communication Networks
Computer Systems
Audiovisual Aids
Evaluation Studies
MEDLARS
Billings, John S. (John Shaw), 1838-1913
Information Retrieval System
Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications
Remote Information Systems Center (RISC)
MEDLARS Decentralization
Corning, Mary E.

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