The Digital Library Research & Development project investigates aspects of creating and disseminating digital collections including proposed and adopted standards, emerging technologies and formats, effects on previously established processes, and protection of original materials.

Our early experiments in document management and conversion resulted in a digital library system of historical materials from the 1960's and 1970's. The Regional Medical Programs Collection consists of approximately 40,000 pages comprising some 1,500 documents. Though the work on this system predated recent research in digital libraries, we addressed many of the same issues that currently face digital library projects.

Working together with NLM's History of Medicine Division, we launched Profiles in Science® in September 1998. The site uses innovative digital technology to make available the manuscript collections of prominent biomedical researchers, medical practitioners, and those fostering science and health. The collections contain published and unpublished materials, including manuscripts, diaries, laboratory notebooks, correspondence, photographs, poems, drawings and audiovisual resources. Some of the collections have been donated to NLM, and others have been digitized in cooperation with collaborating institutions. The subjects of the collections presently available on Profiles in Science include: