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HAPPY 35TH BIRTHDAY, MEDLINE!

NLM's Flagship Database Debuted October 27, 1971

THE WAY WE WERE

Try transporting yourself in time back to 1971. The following milestones may help.

How far we have come since then!

Here are some comparisons between the MEDLINE of 1971 and the MEDLINE of today.

For a more detailed MEDLINE time capsule and links to more information about MEDLINE and PubMed®, go to the NLM Technical Bulletin at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so06/so06_med_35.html.

View a PDF version (450KB) of the complete article, "NLM to Introduce MEDLINE Service," from the September-October 1971 NLM NEWS at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/medline_news_article.pdf

THE EVOLUTION OF MEDLINE: ONE INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Medical practitioners and medical researchers both depend on the accumulated wisdom of those who have gone before. It was not so long ago that one could assemble this wisdom only by poring over printed bibliographies, usually the Index Medicus, which the National Library of Medicine, under John Shaw Billings, began publishing in 1879. Today, virtually all biomedical scientists, many health practitioners, and an increasing number of consumers search MEDLINE/PubMed® (more about PubMed, below) to learn about published research findings. This is the story of how an NIH "discovery" has evolved over the decades to become a service that is not only indispensable to medical research and practice, but one that is consulted millions of times each year by the general public.

The pioneering MEDLINE project, begun by NLM in the early 1970s, evolved from the computerized system used to produce the Index Medicus, which the NLM had installed in 1964. MEDLINE was the first successful marriage of a large reference database with a national telecommunications network, and it has been called the Model T of online databases: although it would usually get you where you wanted to go, it required a pioneering spirit to master its intricacies and the patience of Job to deal with its idiosyncrasies. Even so, the NLM received more requests than it could handle from medical librarians, who wanted to be trained so that they could conduct literature for health professionals and scientists in hospitals, universities, and laboratories. As noted above, the original system covered 239 journals, and NLM boasted that it was "capable of supporting up to 25 simultaneous users."

The eighties saw the introduction of "Grateful Med," a software program created by NLM that one could load onto a PC or Macintosh and, equipped with a modem and a password, search MEDLINE right from one's home, office or laboratory. Grateful Med was eagerly snapped up not only by librarians but by health professionals, scientists, students, lawyers, medical journalists and others, who saw the average charge of $2 per MEDLINE search as a bargain. Trying to find the same information in the printed Index Medicus would surely cost much more, in time and effort, if it could be done at all. At the height of the Grateful Med era, the number of registered users reached 125,000 and coverage had increased to almost 4,000 journals. Another change by then was that most MEDLINE references were accompanied by an abstract.

The 1990s, of course, was the era of the Internet and the World Wide Web. NLM had one of the earliest Federal Web sites (1993) and introduced MEDLINE searching via the "Internet Grateful Med" in 1996. Dr. Michael DeBakey, then a Regent of the Library, and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, a surgeon, introduced the new system at a press conference. The following year, Vice President Gore introduced free MEDLINE searching via the Web, using a new system called PubMed. Now, for the first time, anyone with access to the Web could search through an immense database of references and abstracts to more millions of journal articles. A decade later, PubMed has evolved into an essential biomedical resource used throughout the world. Read more about PubMed's tenth anniversary below.

In fact, PubMed and Internet Grateful Med had both simplified MEDLINE searching to the point where the public encountered no difficulty at all in retrieving relevant references on any biomedical subject from the literature. Since about 30 percent of all MEDLINE searches are being done by consumers, this presented the NLM with a wonderful opportunity. Why not create a service that not only will provide selective MEDLINE results that are useful to the consumer, but also link the Web user to the authoritative, full-text health information being put out by NIH institutes and by a variety of non-Federal sources" Such a service, called MedlinePlus, at http://medlineplus.gov, was introduced in October 1998.

AND, IN RELATED NEWS, HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY, PUBMED

Another major milestone, ten years ago, was the launch of PubMed. It was first released in January 1996 as an experimental database under the Entrez retrieval system, with full access to MEDLINE.

The word "experimental" was dropped from the Web site in April 1997, and on June 26, 1997, a Capitol Hill press conference officially announced free MEDLINE access via PubMed. PubMed searches were approximately two million for the month of June 1997, while current usage typically exceeds three million searches per day.

For a more detailed look at PubMed's history, please consult the NLM Technical Bulletin at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so06/so06_pm_10.html

To read more about the Capitol Hill press conference announcing free MEDLINE searching via PubMed, go to: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/archive/20040423/pubs/nlmnews/maraug97.html#Gore

To learn about the difference between MEDLINE and PubMed, please consult the fact sheet at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dif_med_pub.html

2006: MORE MILESTONES

For a detailed chronology of milestones at NLM since its creation as the library of Surgeon General of the Army in 1836, go to: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/nlmhistory.html

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Last reviewed: 23 October 2006
Last updated: 23 October 2006
First published: 23 October 2006
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanence Not Guaranteed