Mission of the National Library of Medicine Cataloging Section

--Responsible for review and development of cataloging policies and for the descriptive and subject cataloging and classification of modern printed, audiovisual and computer software materials acquired for the NLM collection, as well as for electronic resources.

--Maintains NLM's online catalogs available via the World Wide Web: LocatorPlus at http://locatorplus.gov and the NLM Catalog at http://nlmcatalog.nlm.nih.gov.

--Maintains and develops the online NLM Classification, a scheme for the shelf arrangement of medical literature in libraries.

--Maintains NLM's internal authority file used in the creation of bibliographic records, including over 1,184,5000 name, title, and subject heading records structured in the MARC 21 format.

--Responsible for the assignment of NLM title abbreviations that appear in the NLM bibliographic records for indexed serials and monographs in NLM indexing citations.

Last reviewed: 29 August 2008
Last updated: 29 August 2008
First published: 26 November 2003
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