The Library of Congress takes national collecting and preservation responsibility for literature; therefore, NLM does not maintain a research collection of fiction or poetry.

The Library's collection does include selected literary works of historical value. Since there is such a large volume of literary works with medical themes, and since it rarely is possible to ascertain at the time of publication whether a new title will be of historical interest, the Library identifies and selects such works retrospectively. In addition, the modern collection includes examples of anthologies of fiction and poetry used in U.S. professional health education, and selected humorous and satirical works. The Library has a significant collection of scholarly works about medicine and literature, in areas such as the history of medicine in literature, psychoanalytic interpretations of literature, and bibliographic works on the subject.