The collections described in this Directory provide research, reference, and interlibrary loan services to scholars interested in the history of the health sciences, including medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. While the Directory is by no means exhaustive, it serves to draw attention to the depth and variety of history of medicine collections available to researchers. In the future, we expect that more institutions will wish to be included.

The records are arranged alphabetically by U.S. state and city, followed by foreign collections grouped alphabetically by country. For each record, the Abstract field indicates the collection's scope of coverage and services provided. The Holdings field lists the substance of the collection and identifies guides to the collection. The person named as Contact has provided information about the collections. Interested researchers should get in touch with the contact person for more details.

The Directory is an online version of the History of Medicine component of DIRLINE (Directory of Information Resources Online), a National Library of Medicine (NLM) database, which contains location and descriptive information about a wide variety of health and biomedical resources. Developed by NLM's History of Medicine Division (HMD), the DIRLINE History of Medicine component aims to assist scholars and researchers in identifying useful medical history collections throughout the world. For further information about the DIRLINE database, please consult the DIRLINE Factsheet at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dirlinfs.html.

We invite libraries, archives, and museums, which include in their collections holdings in the history of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, to become part of the DIRLINE History of Medicine component. Participating institutions must be able to respond to relevant reference questions and, in the case of libraries, interlibrary loan requests. To ensure that information is up to date, participating institutions are encouraged to keep their records current. New and revised data can be sent to the History of Medicine Division via mail, e-mail or fax.