he keyboarding data creation stream for MEDLINE citations ceased June 29, 2004. NLM used keyboarding to create journal article bibliographic data since 1967. In 1980, the function of editing the published literature to correspond to NLM's bibliographic citation style was added to the keyboarding contract, and in 1989, NLM added the function of selecting articles to be indexed from general scientific journals. Until 1996, double keyboarding via contract was the sole method of data creation, reaching a maximum of 450,000 citations at its peak.

In the mid-1980s, NLM began to explore alternatives to manual keyboarding as a method of citation creation. Alternatives became imperative in early 1996 when a contract dispute halted NLM's keyboarding activity for three months. In response to this crisis, NLM developed a cost-effective scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) system as well as a standard for direct electronic submission of citation data from publishers to MEDLINE. Publisher-supplied electronic citation data today accounts for about 75% of all new MEDLINE citations and the proportion continues to grow. The scanning and OCR system has been improved to the point that it can handle the rest of the journals. As a result of these developments, it is no longer cost effective or necessary for NLM to continue the keyboarding operation. NLM continues to use contractors to perform the quality-assurance of publisher-supplied citation data and to do scanning and OCR data entry.

Keyboarding Ceases as a Data Creation Method for MEDLINE^® Citations. NLM Tech Bull. 2004 Jul-Aug;(339):e5.