Bookshelf was established in 1999 as the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) full-text repository of life sciences books and documents. Since 2004, with the addition of HSTAT, Bookshelf has been the home for full text health technology assessments, systematic reviews, clinical guidelines, and related health documents sponsored by US federal agencies and other private and international organizations partnering with NLM. Since 2009, Bookshelf has also been the home for National Academies reports funded by the National Institutes of Health. Since 2014, Bookshelf has been the designated repository for monographs and chapters submitted in accordance with the Wellcome Trust’s open access policy on monographs and book chapters.

These partnerships support NLM’s mission of enabling biomedical research; supporting evidence-based health care and public health; and promoting healthy behavior through the acquisition, organization, and preservation of the world's scholarly biomedical literature. Additionally, these efforts support and catalyze NLM’s commitment to open science policies and practices. In bringing together the research outputs of many funding organizations and scientific disciplines in a central archive, NLM seeks to improve discovery of, provide consistent access to, and ensure long-term preservation of the scientific record.

NLM will consider partnering with funding and sponsoring organizations to leverage the Bookshelf repository infrastructure when the following conditions are met:

The funder or sponsor has an established process, e.g., peer review, for selecting its projects.

The funder has a public or open access policy that requires the deposit of funded research monographs and book chapters in Bookshelf.

The funder is able to demonstrate how partnering with Bookshelf will further the NLM and NIH missions as well as their own.

There is evidence that the funder’s policy and implementation will contribute a sufficient volume of content to Bookshelf on a continuing basis.

To become a partner, a funder must sign a partnership agreement with NLM outlining the responsibilities of the NLM and the partner organization or make arrangements with an existing NLM partner (i.e., Europe PMC). In general, partners may leverage the Bookshelf infrastructure but remain responsible for the maintenance and enforcement of their individual policies.