Bookshelf was established in 1999 as the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) full-text repository of life sciences books and documents. One of the ongoing goals of Bookshelf is to facilitate the discovery of reference information for biological, chemical, and other biomedical data, both through retrieval in Bookshelf, but also through its integration with other NCBI databases, such as PubMed, Gene, Genetic Testing Registry, and PubChem. To support this goal, Bookshelf collaborates with NIH or other institutionally-sponsored authors and editors to make this content available through the conversion of Word documents meeting Bookshelf style guidelines to XML meeting Bookshelf’s technical requirements.

NLM will consider such collaborations when the following conditions are met for the content to be converted:

The content meets NLM’s guidelines for independently sponsored works

The content is sponsored by NIH or a credible institutional sponsor, such as a university department

The content is peer reviewed and adheres to a review and update cycle if continuously published

The content owner is able to demonstrate how collaborating with Bookshelf will further the NLM and NIH missions as well as their own, such as providing reference material to data archived in NCBI and other NLM databases

NLM will recognize the institutional sponsor as the content owner and expects the content owner to take responsibility of the scientific and editorial quality of the content and ensure that it meets NLM’s standards for Bookshelf. The content owner must sign a participant or other partnership agreement with NLM outlining the responsibilities of NLM and the collaborating sponsor.

Bookshelf collaborates with participating sponsors, authors, and editors on the following active conversion projects:

Assay Guidance Manual

EndoText

GeneReviews

LactMed

Among the conversion projects that are no longer active include:

Baculovirus Molecular Biology

Enterococci

Molecular Imaging and Contrast Agent Database (MICAD)

Streptococcus pyogenes

In addition, Bookshelf conversion projects include support for documentation about NCBI and NLM resources.

General inquiries about Bookshelf and funder policies can be sent to vog.hin.mln.ibcn@flehskoob