Pricing Policies for the National Library of Medicine

Excerpt

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has been the focus of several reviews of its policies for pricing of products and services. To date, those pricing policies have been based essentially on recovery of the costs of access to its databases and have not included allocations of the costs of database creation. Private sector organizations have repeatedly questioned these policies, with the view that more "market-oriented" pricing policies should be adopted.

This special attention reflects the NLM's importance for medical information, its role in developing computer retrieval, and the value of its current products and services. In all reviews, virtually