THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDLARS.

The MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) Project grew out of the National Library of Medicine Index Mechanization Project of 1958-60, previously reported. Work on MEDLARS has been in progress for over two years, and the system should be operational at the beginning of 1964. MEDLARS is a computerized information retrieval system with three major types of products: (1) one-shot demand searches on questions of great complexity, (2) recurring bibliographies in special fields of the medical sciences, and (3) composition of a comprehensive periodical index, the Index Medicus.