The recurring bibliographies program of MEDLARS.

Recurring bibliographies are by-products of the MEDLARS system which are prepared by the National Library of Medicine in collaboration with nonprofit scientific and professional societies and institutions and government agencies that represent a specialty area of biomedical research or practice. The sponsor generally assumes responsibility for the costs of publication and distribution. At present MEDLARS has a planned capacity of fifty such recurring bibliographies. The subject parameters and format are defined by the representatives of the sponsoring organization and the NLM Search, MeSH, and Index staffs. As citations are regularly put into the MEDLARS store, each one that qualifies for a recurring bibliography is identified and tagged by the computer with the number assigned to the pertinent RB. The MEDLARS store is searched for citations for a particular recurring bibliography according to the schedule specified by the sponsoring organization, and the output is printed from a GRACE tape.