Index Medicus (IM) is a curated subset of MEDLINE, which is a bibliographic database of life science and biomedical science information, principally scientific journal articles. From 1879 to 2004, "Index Medicus" was a comprehensive bibliographic index of such articles in the form of a print index or (in later years) its onscreen equivalent. It was begun by John Shaw Billings, head of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, United States Army. This library later evolved into the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM). In the 1960s, the NLM began the indexing work by creating MEDLARS, a bibliographic database, which became MEDLINE. "Index Medicus" thus became the print presentation of the MEDLINE database's content, which users accessed usually by visiting a library which subscribed to "Index Medicus" (for example, a university scientist at the university library). It continued in this role through the 1980s and 1990s, while various electronic presentations of MEDLINE's content also evolved, first with proprietary online services (accessed mostly at libraries) and later with CD-ROMs, then with Entrez and PubMed. As users gradually migrated from print to online use, "Index Medicus" print subscriptions dwindled. During the 1990s, the dissemination of home internet connections, the launch of the Web and web browsers, and the launch of PubMed greatly accelerated the shift of online access to MEDLINE from something one did at the library to something one did anywhere. This dissemination, along with the superior usability of search compared with use of a print index in serving the user's purpose (which is to distill relevant subsets of information from a vast superset), caused the use of MEDLINE's print output, "Index Medicus", to drop precipitously. In 2004, print publication ceased. Today, "Index Medicus" and "Abridged Index Medicus" still exist conceptually as content curation services that curate MEDLINE content into search subsets or database views (in other words, subsets of MEDLINE records from some journals but not others). This filters search results with a view toward excluding poor-quality articles (such as by excluding junk journals), which is often helpful depending on the needs of the user.

1. What does IM stand for?
2. What is it?
3. When did it begin?
4. When did it end?
5. What was a variable of its decline?
6. Did the web help with the decline?
7. Can IM still be used?
8. Does it encourage badly written articles?
9. What does it exclude?
10. Who started it?
11. Was he in the military?
12. What branch?
13. What was he the leader of?
14. Which later became what?
15. What did it start doing in the sixties?
16. How did people generally access it?
17. How long was it used in this way?
18. What is a new way it was accessed after this time period?
19. Could it be accessed through DVDs or CDs?
20. What came after the ROM's?

Provide a numbered list of answers.
1. Index Medicus.
2. A bibliographic database, principally scientific journal articles.
3. 1879
4. 2004.
5. Users gradually migrated from print to online use,
6. Yes.
7. Yes.
8. No.
9. Poor-quality articles.
10. John Shaw Billings.
11. Yes.
12. United States Army.
13. Head of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office.
14. The United States National Library of Medicine.
15. Began the indexing work by creating MEDLARS, a bibliographic database, which became MEDLINE.
16. Bby visiting a library which subscribed to IM.
17. Through the 1980s and 1990s.
18. Various electronic presentations.
19. Yes.
20. Entrez and PubMed.