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Bibliographic Services Division (BSD)

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MEDLARS Management Section (MMS)

The primary focus of MMS is database development, management, testing and quality assurance, and user support to foster expanded access to health information for health professionals and the general public.

MMS staff collaborate with staff across NLM to develop, test and support multiple products and services relating to health terminologies, chemical data, and bibliographic citations. Employees in this section work on customer support; user documentation; content development, collation and distribution; quality control and testing; and training and outreach on the NLM systems and services we support.

The section's staff work on the following products and tasks:

  • Terminologies
    • Provides editing, quality assurance, and testing of terminologies developed and supported by NLM, including Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), RxNorm, SNOMED CT, and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS).
    • Coordinates development and testing of terminology-related tools and services
      1. AccessGUDID
      2. DailyMed
      3. MeSH Browser
      4. MeSH-on-Demand
      5. NIH Common Data Elements Repository (CDE-R)
      6. Value Set Authority Center (VSAC)
      7. UMLS Terminology Services (UTS)
    • Develops documentation and training and provides user support for terminologies and terminology-related tools and services
    • Supports the NLM Health Data Standards and Interoperability group
  • Bibliographic citation data
    • Provides serials support for MEDLINE, PMC, GenBank and Author Manuscript titles in the form of data entry; data review, quality assurance and testing of serial data utilizing various serial application tools
    • Supports creation, editing, quality assurance and testing of OLDMEDLINE (pre-1966) citations from NLM Print Indexes
    • Serves in a publisher liaison role, for MEDLINE journals
    • Coordinates quality assurance and testing of annual Year-End Processing activities when NLM switches from one MeSH year to the next
  • Data support
    • Supports access to NLM data through NLM Data Distribution Program, Data Discovery and NLM Products & Services (e_Resources)
    • Supports metrics/analytics for the section and/or division
    • Conducts data science projects

MMS staff are responsible for supporting the following:

Last Reviewed: November 21, 2023