New NLM Web Site

MEDLINE Logs Ten Millionth Citation

Betsy Humphreys Heads Library Operations

ELHILL and TOXNET Change

Regents Chart New Course

Honoring Elsie Werth

Native American Youth Visit

Dr. Spann Retires

Public Health Center Named for Dr. Mel Spann

NLM Rolls Out New Booth

Dr. Harold Schoolman Retires

Dead Sea Scrolls

Emerging Health Information Infrastructure

Worthy of Note: BLAST

Partners In Information Access Awards

Bosma and McCutcheon Appointed Section Heads

NLM Director Visits University of Colorado

Training NLM Associate Fellows

"Breath of Life" Exhibit

Dr. Allen Dies

Names in the News

Products and Publications

NLM in Print

With the incredible success of PubMed and Internet Grateful Med (IGM), NLM's web- based products to access MEDLINE, the time has come to announce the cessation of command language access. All direct public access to the ELHILL mainframe command language computer system and the TOXNET command/menu system ceased on September 30, 1999. All DOS, Windows and Macintosh versions of Grateful Med, the software disk-based system for searching MEDLINE and other NLM databases, ceased functioning as of September 30, 1999, because they access ELHILL. Most searchers of NLM information resources have already made the switch to NLM web- based services.

Web-based Access

ELHILL, NLM's legacy computer retrieval system, has provided command language access for a fee for almost 30 years. (The ELHILL retrieval system is named for U.S. Senator Lister Hill, who along with then-Senator John F. Kennedy sponsored the bill that created the National Library of Medicine from the Armed Forces Medical Library in 1956.) Now that the system will be closed to the public permanently, all users will need to access one of NLM's web-based search engines, PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) or Internet Grateful Med (http://igm.nlm.nih.gov) for their database searching. Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) data may be found on the MeSH browser at /mesh/99MBrowser.html. Data previously available in AVLINE, CATLINE, and SERLINE are now available on NLM's new Integrated Library System, NLM LOCATORplus, at http://locatorplus.gov/. TOXNET databases are now available on the web at http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/sis1/

Automatic SDIs and Offline Prints Discontinued

Once ELHILL access is discontinued, billed User ID codes will no longer function and users will no longer be able to request offline prints or Automatic SDIs (Selective Dissemination of Information current awareness searches) from NLM. However, users can now generate their own SDIs free of charge by using the SDILINE database in Internet Grateful Med. IGM has developed a stored search capability that can be used to generate SDIs. NLM also expects to have a stored search feature available as part of PubMed's cubby service that will allow searchers to permanently store search strategies.

Training in the Use of PubMed, IGM, TOXNET on the Web, and LOCATORplus NLM appreciates the loyalty many of its database searchers feel to ELHILL. However, the time has come to let go of this groundbreaking and incredibly durable search system and embrace the web-based search engines that will take us into the future. Information on classes for using PubMed, IGM and TOXNET on the web is available at http://www.nnlm.nlm.nih.gov/mar/online/schedule.html and self-instructional training manuals may be downloaded from /pubs/web_based.html. A tutorial on using the new LOCATORplus online catalogue is available at http://locatorplus.gov/tutorials/quickstart/sld001.htm.

Thanks to Toby Port of the MEDLARS Management Section for contributing this article, and to Carolyn Tilley, head of MMS, for invaluable assistance.

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