Matching references with MEDLINE via TCP/IP

Bibliographic references are an important part of databases and information resources used by clinicians and biomedical researchers. In addition to the obvious clerical advantages of standard references, bibliographic references can also be used as links to related items in different data sets. This paper describes an effort that involved matching references from a variety of disparate databases to canonical MEDLINE references. The references matched were those involved in a database unification project which is part of the Mouse Genome Informatics effort at The Jackson Laboratory. Software was developed to take advantage of a commercially available retrieval engine which accesses MEDLINE on CD-ROM disks. The software permits client programs on UNIX/C, and potentially other environments, to access unabridged MEDLINE via networks supporting the TCP/IP protocols. The matching process described can be used as a model for similar efforts with different research or clinical data sets, as well as different hardware or software environments.