OLDMEDLINE Now Available for Lease

The OLDMEDLINE database contains 307,366 citations that were published in the 1964 and 1965 Cumulated Index Medicus (CIM).

This file became available to searchers of the NLM MEDLARS system on December 18, 1996, and is expected to grow as citations from earlier volumes of CIM are converted to machine-readable format and added. The database is now available on tape for lease from the National Library of Medicine for an annual fee of $1,000. Please contact Jane L. Rosov at janer@nlm.nih.gov or 888-FINDNLM in regard to leasing the file.

In 1964, NLM began testing the computerized MEDLARS system as a mechanism for producing Index Medicus, and in 1966 began making this information available online in the MEDLINE database. However, the Library did not keep indexed citations for the 1964 and 1965 publications in electronic form, and until the creation of OLDMEDLINE this information was not available in any NLM database. NLM was assisted in its effort to provide online access to these citations by the Deutsches Institut fur Medizinische Dokumentation und Information (DIMDI), the International MEDLARS Center in Germany, which had tapes of the original data from the 1964 and 1965 CIM, and supplied them to NLM.

Data from the DIMDI tapes have not been maintained for over 30 years, and were loaded "as is" into OLDMEDLINE. NLM conducted limited review and maintenance of data prior to creating OLDMEDLINE, but the records have not undergone the stringent data entry and validation procedures now in place for MEDLINE and other MEDLARS files. In most instances, these records reflect the information as it appeared when created in 1964/65. Please see page 1 of the November-December 1996 Technical Bulletin for more details about OLDMEDLINE. In addition, the OLDMEDLINE chapter (chapter 23) of the Online Services Reference Manual [This link was removed because it is no longer valid] may be downloaded from the NLM Web site.

It is expected that 1962 and 1963 CIM records will be added to OLDMEDLINE early in 1998, as will approximately 500 records in the area of tuberculosis. In addition, there will be some data clean-up to correct some errors that were introduced when the file was first built. Licensees who receive OLDMEDLINE tapes prior to the addition of the new records and maintenance activity will need to process a full file replacement after these actions are taken.