COMMISSION ON ORGANIZATION
MEDICAL SERVICES TASK FORCE

Statement Mad Dr, Alan Gregg to the Commission on April 12, 1

Dr, Gregg began by saying that the Medical Library of the Armed
Forces has been long considered one of the major resources for both
medical care and medical research in the world, There are some 700,000
volumes and 300,000 pamphlets, and, in addition to this library material,
there are important services of lending photostat copies, etc, to libraries
elsewhere, together with the preparation and publication of the index of
current medical literature, Dr. Welch compared this library with the
discovery of anaesthesia in the categories of major contributions of
America to medicine throughout the world,

The following statement was then read:

"Most significant scientific research becomes available in detail
only in numerous but indispensable scientific journals. In this form it
is both spread and stored as the basis for application of knowledge, and
as the source and stimulus for similar or quite different types of further
research, Having but few subscribers ard little advertising, scientific
journals are printed in small issues, They are expensive and often become
rare in comparison to the growing numbers of research workers. No re-
search worker can afford to subscribe to many of the journals he must
consult. Nor can any one research institute afford to purchase all the
back numbers of journals it needs to consult, There is no alternative
to the large number of journals required to carry the immense number of

facts newly and currently being discovered by research.
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"For these reasons libraries and effectively arranged indexes of
past and current scientific articles have become simply indispensable;
no serious scientific worker can afford to neglect the literature lest
he repeat experiments that have already been done or isolate himself from
what others are doing. Scientific work that cannot be spread and stored
for further use can hardly justify, in most cases, the funds expended
for research, Consequently, one of the greatest imaginable wastes of
research funds would arise from neglect of the best means of spreading,
storing, and indexing of scientific articles and books.

"In the course of the Task Force's present inquiries into the effi-
ciency and economy of medical research work supported by the Federal
Government, we have obtained fore~knowledge of an impending waste of the
most serious sort, In the name of ‘economy! the date of October 1, 1954
has been set beyond which funds will not be approved by the Bureau of the
Budget for the preparation and publishing by the Library of the Armed
Forces of the Current list of Medical Literature, The Current list is a
monthly index prepared and published by the library of the more important
discoveries and observations reported by workers in the medical sciences.
Approximately 10,000 titles appear in each issue, Delay that is inter-
posed in its availability to research workers means loss of time that
costs money and national advantage in the quest for knowledge, What is
the use of putting millions of dollars into research work and taking the
most effective single step to limit the availability and use of the

results of that research work? For no single decision could be more
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readily devised to waste the effort and lessen the confidence of medical
scientists in the good sense of Government as the supporter of medical
care, prevention and research than the interruption of the preparation
and publication of the Current List of the Library of the Armed Forces,

“While there is yet time to prevent a serious waste of Government
research money, the Medical Services Task Force urges the Commission to
request the Bureau of the Budget to rescind its decision regarding the
publication costs of the Current list of the Library of the Armed Forces,
To withdraw support after October 1 next would incur losses to medical
research out of all proportion to the relatively picayune expenditures
which presumably this notice from the Budget Bureau was expected to reduce,
The Medical Services Task Force presents this request now because unless
action is taken promptly the threatened paralysis of the Current List will
be preceded well before October 1 by discouragement and a steadily com=
pounding waste of research funds,

Dr. Gregg explained that, apart from the above item concerning the
publication of the Current List, the Task Force wished to present to the
Commission a much more general subject, namely the future status from the
standpoint of administration of the Armed Forces Medical Idibrary, He
then read the following statement:

"The Medical Services Task Force furthermore believes there are ade-
quate reasons for recommending to the Commission that Congress be asked
to give a new status to what is now called the Armed Forces Medical Library,

In brief, this library should be called the National Library of Medicine
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and established on the same basis as the National Gallery of Art, i.e.,
as a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution, supported by public appropri-
ation, belonging neither to the Army, Navy, Air Force or the Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare, but put under a Board charged with the
responsibility of collecting and maintaining a national library of
Medicine, comparable to the Board of the National Gallery of Art,

"In the light of the now numerous and widely variant activities of
the Government in medical research as well as medical care which go far
beyond the needs or purview of the Armed Services, neither experience nor
reason shows that the Department of Defense offers the wisest administra-
tive placement for this library, We know of no university whose library
has not an acknowledged identity apart from the different faculties and
departments, with whose special collections it nonetheless maintains
effective relations, Budgetary criteria and forms of administrative con-
trol that are appropriate for any one or all of the Armed Forces fall,
and for thirty years have fallen, lamentably short of meeting the needs
of what is and will continue to be the Netional library of Medicine,

"The Task Force is prepared to complete a detailed plan to the Commis-
sion since we are convinced that to maintain and increase the efficiency
of what is, in its existing collections and services, the greatest medical
library in the world calls for your most serious consideration as an

economic and essential instrument of research and medical care,"