Dr, Bertram Brown
Ketional tnstltute of
Mente! Health
Bethesda 14, Maryland

Dear Bert:

1 very much appreciated the chance to talk to you over the phone
about Infcrmatior problems in mental retardation and mantal health. f vould
like to relterate my strong feeling that It would te o very great mista<e
to continue the development of fragmentary approaches tc the general problen
of medica! research communication and | rather fear that whot you Indicate as
being In the wind at NINH Is a step In this wrong direction. It would be
much more constructive, | feel, to try to Infuse the Natlonal Library of
Medicine with a more ambitious sense of misston than they now seem ts have
and thus make a more econanical and timely use of resources that are going to
be wasted by different groups doing the same jobs over and over ageln. |
am enclosing two memoranda on the sublect of scflence information thet al
anticipate will be reprasented In the ultimate reports of the President's
Panel on Mental Retardation and the Science Informetion Panel of PSAC,
respectively. {i would be anxlous to have further coursel on how the sclentl fle
Interest in such proposals could be maid manifest to help Loost thelr Imp lew
mentation,

| have written to Gene Garfield to suggest thet he get In touch with
you about some Interim services that could be developed [na hurry and might
be actually the least wasteful In terms of reduplication of effort, elnce
they will draw on some more centralized systems that he has In mind and hes
going. But | still do think we would be much better off to get down to
business on the main problems rather than hacking at the branches. Also,
enclosed Is some material on citation Indexing that Sarfleld has going currently
with NIH and NSF support.

| emphatically believe that It would be absurd for us to think of
setting up a center for mental retardation data here that would take srecedence
over anything that could be much better organized in Vashington or Bethesda
in connection with the National Library of Medicine or additional NIMH services.
However, there are some exciting possibilities In the idea of unifying a
DHEW medical Information repository with some more axtended services out of
the Lane Library of medicine here at Stanford, and 1 would give every possible
encouragement to this Idea. As you may know, Lane Library had been located in

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NMIM Fl
DOr. Bertram Brown 2 March 16, 1962

San Francisco with the old Stanford Medical School, and has had a traditional
obligation to serve not only the local medical school but the general
California medical community. In fact, we are at the present time not really
very well equipped to do this from a mechanical standpoint, and the service
functions are a substantial burden on the proper operation of the library as
a reference center. This would not be a too difficult problem to solve If
the ambitions of the library service were set a little higher by coordinatéon
with the HEW repository and with a rather modest amount of financial help,
witch might rot recessarily have to depend entirely on outside sources

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