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The aim of this project was to devise and put into practice a system that would permit publication of an index (the Index Medicus) of greater coverage, currency, and ease of use than the previous Current List of Medical Literature, published by the National Library of Medicine. The latter was the largest indexing service of a specialized subject anywhere in the world, 1,600 journals being indexed regularly every month. Further expansion of the Current List was impossible without considerably speeding up the collating and numbering of the entries for each issue and the hand‐mounting of all entry slips on page‐boards to be sent to the printers. These operations could not begin until all the material for a month's issue had been collected and a twenty‐four‐hour timetable for these processes had already been introduced to reduce the delay to the minimum. Mechanization was clearly necessary.