This report has surveyed medical information services of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) focused on the MEDLINE database historically from 1960s to date. Main topics reviewed are, MEDLARS, MEDLINE service, web-based database service PubMed, consumer oriented health information service MEDLINEplus, public access digital archive PubMed Central, and NLM information policies as a backbone of their various activities. From a view point of author’s experiences as a NLM MEDLARS trainee, MEDLARS indexing and search practice also are mentioned.
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