Definition of MEDLINE

MEDLINE: MEDLINE® is the best known database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). MEDLINE enables anyone to query the NLM computer's store of journal article references on specific topics. It currently contains 9 million references going back to the mid-1960s. Other databases provide information on cataloging and serials, toxicological and environmental health data, AIDS, and other specialized areas.

Through the World Wide Web, some 350,000 MEDLINE searches a day are done by health professionals, scientists, librarians, and the general public. A new Web service, called MEDLINEplus, links users to many sources of consumer health information.

MEDLINE and MEDLINEplus are part of MEDLARS® (an acronym that stands for Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), a computer-based system that allows rapid access to NLM's store of biomedical information.

The NLM is the largest medical library in the world. It is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. It collects materials in all areas of biomedicine and health care, as well as works on biomedical aspects of technology, the humanities, and the physical, life, and social sciences. NLM is a key resource for health science libraries and for all of medicine. It is to this extraordinary resource that MEDLARS gives access.