Frank Bradway Rogers

Frank B. Rogers

Frank Bradway Rogers (1914-1987) was director of the US National Library of Medicine.

Life

Frank Bradway Rogers was born on December, 1914 in Norwood, Ohio. He attended Yale University as a premed student and received a BA degree in 1936. He later enrolled at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, graduated MD in 1942, joined the US Army Medical Corps, and served in various hospitals. In 1948 he accepted a position as Director of the Army Medical Library and was sent to complete an MS in Library Service at Columbia University before taking up the position in 1949. The library was renamed Armed Forces Medical Library in 1952 and in 1956 transferred to the Public Health Service and combined Navy medical libraries, Air Force medical libraries, and the Public Health Service into one system and became the National Library of Medicine. He served as director until 1963.

After retiring from the National Library of Medicine in 1963 Rogers became director of the University of Colorado Medical Center Library in Denver until 1974. He died on July 27, 1987 in Denver, Colorado.

Contributions

Rogers was instrumental in changing the Army Medical Library into the National Library of Medicine.

He replaced the Index-Catalogue with a revised Current List of Medical Literature and a new Index Medicus and introduced data-processing equipment for its production. He helped develop an electronic system of storing and retrieving information called Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS), which laid the groundwork for MEDLINE.

Publications

• Guide to Russian medical literature, ed. with Scott Adams. US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, 1958. Public Health Service publication, no. 602. [1]
• "The National Library of Medicine. I." With Dorothy M. Schullian. The Library Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1958): 1-17.
• "The rise and decline of the altitude therapy of tuberculosis." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43, no. 1 (1969): 1-16.
• "The development of MEDLARS." Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 52, no. 1 (1964): 150-151. [2]
• "Problems of medical subject cataloging." Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 56, no 4 (Oct 1968): 355-364. [3]
• "Computerized Bibliographic Retrieval Services." Library Trends 23, no 1 (Summer 1974): 73-88. [4]
• Medical Library Association Oral History Committee interview with Frank Bradway Rogers. Interview by Nancy W. Zinn. Chicago, Ill. : Medical Library Association, 1979. OCLC (OCoLC)ocm16578879.

Offices

• Medical Library Association. President, 1962-63.
• American Association for the History of Medicine. President, 1966-68.

Awards

• Medical Library Association. The Marcia C. Noyes Award for outstanding achievement, 1961.
• American Library Association. Melvil Dewey Medal, 1963.

Further reading

• "Frank Bradway Rogers." Wikipedia [5]
• Blake, John B. "Frank Bradway Rogers 1914-1987." [Obituary.] Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 76, no 1 (Jan 1988): 95-7. [6]
• Miles, Wyndham D. A history of the National Library of Medicine : the nation's treasury of medical knowledge. Bthesda, MD: National Library of Medicine, 1982. NIH publication 85-1904. [7]
• Bourne, Charles P. & Trudi B.Hahn. A history of online information services, 1963-1976. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Papers

• National Library of Medicine. History of Medicine Division. Bethesda, MD:
  • Frank Bradway Rogers Papers. MS C 465. [8]
  • Wyndham D. Miles Papers on the History of the National Library of Medicine. MS C 431. [9]
• University of Colorado Medical School Library has administrative papers of his work as director of the library, 1964-1974.