MEDLARS II : A Review * BY LINNEA SODERGREN , Regional Services Coordinator Midwest Regional

The MEDLARS II effort, as it was developed until June 1971, is reviewed in terms of the overall planning process. How MEDLARS I was approached by NLM is discussed first and its objectives used for comparison. Certain technical, managerial, and intellectual aspects are outlined as types of problems encountered in designing MEDLARS II. While improvement upon the MEDLARS I seemed to be the main reason for planning a MEDLARS II, objectives became blurred and divergent as the project went along. The complexities of creating a central computerized data base of health sciences bibliographic information and library functional activities for nationwide use were underappreciated and remain a challenge to NLM. THE 1956 federal legislation that transferred the Armed Forces Medical Library to the jurisdiction of the Public Health Service and designated it as the National Library of Medicine recognized the sense of identity that had shaped that institution as the national medical library. It also assigned to the Public Health Service serious responsibilities for the operation of the library and provided an impetus to the library to take stock of itself, review its direction, and set guidelines for the future. In 1960, the Study Group on the Mission and Organization of the Public Health Service completed a comprehensive management survey of the library. The Study Group recommended major revisions of the divisional structure of the National Library of Medicine and assigned the library large new programs. One of the more important programs undertaken was an investigation of the "feasibility of using electronic digital computers for the * Work supported largely by funds granted to the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago by the National Library of Medicine specifically for training in medical librarianship under U.S. Public Health Service Grant 5 TOI LM0014. This paper is a revision of one chapter of the author's master's thesis (1972). publication of Index Medicus and also as a basis for the cdnstruction of an efficient reference and retrieval service" (1). The Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) that resulted from this investigation was the beginning of a series of expansive programs assumed by the library to increase access to its resources and to the growing volume of medical literature in general. The library responded to a perceived need with MEDLARS but with the knowledge that ever improving system capabilities would call for the design of a more sophisticated system in the future. For this reason, MEDLARS II was planned. Although much of the design for MEDLARS II depended on the original system, it failed because it could not eliminate the weaknesses of the first system and did not build upon its accomplishments. An analysis of the differences between the objectives and planning of the two designs may explain why MEDLARS II did not replace the original system. According to Austin's report (2), through the use of an electronic digital computer and equipment for composing information for printing, the original MEDLARS was designed to accomplish the following objectives: (1) Improve the quality of and enlarge (broaden the scope of) Index Medicus and at the same time reduce the time required to prepare the monthly editions for printing. (2) Make possible the production of other compilations similar to Index Medicus in form and content (but in more specific medical subject areas and hence smaller in size). (3) Make it possible to include in Index Medicus and in other compilations citations derived not only from journal articles but from other sources as well. (4) Make possible the prompt and efficient servicing of requests for special bibliographies, on both a demand and a recurring basis, Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 61(4) Oct. 1973 400