What does IM stand for?
Index Medicus.
What is it?
A bibliographic database, principally scientific journal articles.
When did it begin?
1879
When did it end?
2004.
What was a variable of its decline?
Users gradually migrated from print to online use,
Did the web help with the decline?
Yes.
Can IM still be used?
Yes.
Does it encourage badly written articles?
No.
What does it exclude?
Poor-quality articles.
Who started it?
John Shaw Billings.
Was he in the military?
Yes.
What branch?
United States Army.
What was he the leader of?
Head of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office.
Which later became what?
The United States National Library of Medicine.
What did it start doing in the sixties?
Began the indexing work by creating MEDLARS, a bibliographic database, which became MEDLINE.
How did people generally access it?
Bby visiting a library which subscribed to IM.
How long was it used in this way?
Through the 1980s and 1990s.
What is a new way it was accessed after this time period?
Various electronic presentations.
Could it be accessed through DVDs or CDs?
Yes.
What came after the ROM's?
Entrez and PubMed.