NISO Member News
Patricia Flatley Brennan, Director, National Library of Medicine (NLM)
The retirement of Patricia F. Brennan as Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) was announced on Thursday, August 31, 2023. She has served in that role at NLM since 2016. Dr. Brennan received a Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After seven years of clinical practice in critical care nursing and psychiatric nursing, Dr. Brennan went on to hold several academic positions at Marquette University, Milwaukee; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; and, before joining NLM, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor at the School of Nursing and College of Engineering.
From the NIH Statement:
Under her leadership, Patti has positioned NLM as a global scientific research library with visible and accessible pathways to research and information that is universally actionable and meaningful to empower researchers, clinicians, patients, and caregivers. NLM has expanded its intramural and extramural research programs, extended access to credible and reliable health information, and further acquired and preserved globally available biomedical literature using modernized approaches to digital research and outreach. Patti led the development of a new strategic plan focused on NLM platforms to advance fundamental and translational science and provide access to data that can help inform clinical care decisions.
Dr. Brennan was named as the Miles Conrad Lecturer for the 2022 NISO Plus annual meeting. Her topic of her talk was "The Role of the Library in a World of Unstructured Data".
While the search for her replacement is on-going, Dr. Stephen Sherry, Director of NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information and NLM Associate Director for Scientific Data Resources, will serve as Acting NLM Director.