Editing MEDLINE (section)

== History ==
MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) was a computerised biomedical [[bibliography|bibliographic]] retrieval system. It was launched by the [[National Library of Medicine]] in 1964 and was the first large-scale, computer-based, retrospective search service available to the general public.<ref name=NLMHistory>{{cite web |url=https://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/nlmhistory.html |title=Milestones in NLM History |access-date=2009-09-06}}</ref>

=== Initial development of MEDLARS ===
{{More citations needed|date=April 2019}}
Since 1879, the National Library of Medicine has published ''[[Index Medicus]]'', a monthly guide to medical articles in thousands of journals. The huge volume of bibliographic citations was manually compiled. In 1957 the staff of the NLM started to plan the mechanization of the ''Index Medicus'', prompted by a desire for a better way to manipulate all this information, not only for ''Index Medicus'' but also to produce subsidiary products. By 1960 a detailed specification was prepared, and by the spring of 1961, [[request for proposal]]s were sent out to 72 companies to develop the system. As a result, a contract was awarded to the [[General Electric Company]]. A [[Honeywell 800|Minneapolis-Honeywell 800]] computer, which was to run MEDLARS, was delivered to the NLM in March 1963, and [[Frank Bradway Rogers]] (Director of the NLM 1949 to 1963) said at the time, "..If all goes well, the January 1964 issue of ''Index Medicus'' will be ready to emerge from the system at the end of this year. It may be that this will mark the beginning of a new era in medical bibliography."

MEDLARS cost $3 million to develop, and at the time of its completion in 1964, no other publicly available, fully operational electronic storage and retrieval system of its magnitude existed. The original computer configuration operated from 1964 until its replacement by MEDLARS II in January 1975.<ref>{{cite journal | pmc=198085 | date=1964 | last1=Rogers | first1=F. B. | title=The Development of MEDLARS | journal=Bulletin of the Medical Library Association | volume=52 | issue=1 | pages=150–151 | pmid=14119285 }}</ref><ref>Miles, Wyndham. The History of the NLM: Chapter 20 – [https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/miles/miles_20.pdf Evolution of Computerized Bibliographies] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121017211456/http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/miles/miles_20.pdf |date=2012-10-17 }} (1983)</ref><ref>Rapp, Barbara A. 2008. "Excellence in Evaluation: Early Landmarks at the National Library of Medicine." ''Library Trends'' 56 (4): 859–87.</ref>

=== MEDLARS Online ===
In late 1971, an online version called MEDLINE ("MEDLARS Online") became available as a way to do online searching of MEDLARS from remote medical libraries.<ref>US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (1982), [http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1982/8219.PDF MEDLARS and Health Information Policy]. {{ISBN|1-4289-2424-8}}</ref> This early system covered 239 journals and boasted that it could support as many as 25 simultaneous online users (remotely logged in from distant medical libraries) at one time.<ref name=medline2>{{cite web|url=http://www.acponline.org/clinical_information/journals_publications/ecp/sepoct00/nlm.pdf|title=Internet Access to the National Library of Medicine|access-date=6 April 2016|url-status=dead|archive-date=2 November 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131102194044/http://www.acponline.org/clinical_information/journals_publications/ecp/sepoct00/nlm.pdf}}</ref> However, this system remained primarily in the hands of libraries, with researchers able to submit pre-programmed search tasks to librarians and obtain results on printouts, but rarely able to interact with the NLM computer output in real-time. This situation continued through the beginning of the 1990s and the rise of the [[World Wide Web]].

In 1996, soon after most home computers began automatically bundling efficient [[web browser]]s, a free public version of MEDLINE was deployed. This system, called [[PubMed]], was offered to the general online user in June 1997, when MEDLINE searches via the Web were demonstrated.<ref name=medline2/>