Jeanne Hurley Simon
Chairperson
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
10 May 1995
2:00 p.m.
Washington Hilton and Towers Hotel
International Ballroom Center
1919 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
Good afternoon and thank you for that very gracious introduction.
I am delighted to be here this afternoon and to bring greetings to all of you in my capacity as Chairperson of the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS). The Commission is an independent agency of the U.S. government. We make policy recommendations to the President and Congress about the library and information needs of the people of the United States.
Our Commission is a citizens' advisory panel. Fourteen Commissioners are appointed by the President and confrimed by the Senate for five-year terms, but only five NCLIS members are professional librarians.
I am an attorney. The Commission membership also includes a university administrator, a professor, a county comptroller, a financial consultant, and the vice president of an information company.
As members of the National Commission, our job is to represent citizens' needs for library and information services. As medical librarians, all of you respond to the health information needs of your communities in the global village. So then, our respective missions are complementary.
Although the Commission focuses primarily on National information policies, our law (P.L. 91-3454) was amended in 1991 to encompass international communications and cooperative networks. The Commission's international interests reflect the trend for libraries to participate in the emerging global information infrastructure.
Many of your sessions at this 7th International Congress on Medical Librarianship reflect this emphasis on the ability of new technology to increase the availability of health information throughout the world. Seeing all of you here today makes me realize the extent to which the medical library and health information community is part of the emerging global village.
The Commission was fortunate to meet in Chicago two years ago in conjunction with the Medical Library Association's annual meeting. At that meeting, Commission members met with MLA leaders to to discuss your outstanding leadership in the health information profession.
We learned that medical librarians are leaders in many different areas, especially in adapting new information and networking technologies to health information delivery systems. And the leadership of the medical library community in professional continuing education is an example for many other professions.
In that respect, I want to read a quote to you from the Janet Doe Lecture presented at the Ninety-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in May 1994. The lecturer was Nina W. Matheson, who said:
"In the final reckoning, I believe I may, in my career, have had two ideas. I seem to have been rubbing together my two sticks for some time, hoping to light fires here and there. These ideas have emerged from ... pushing the limits of the idea of the library and of our professional capabilities as librarians. One idea is that librarians and libraries must be agents of change....
The other idea is that the library must change, fundamentally. Our business should be the ownership and management of first-hand knowledge rather than the mere storage and dissemination of second-hand knowledge."
I wanted to share these inspiring words with all of you at this Congress to help set the tone for your sessions here. For the changes you are making in medical librarianship and what you are doing in the area of "first-hand" knowledge management, have a direct impact on the quality of health care, the quality of medical service, the quality of professional reserach, and the quality of life in our global community.
The National Commission is pleased to salute all of you here at this 7th International Congress on Medical Librarianship. We hope that you have a wonderful and useful congress and that you achieve the vision expressed in your meeting's theme of "Health Information in the Global Village." Thank you.