History: Late 20th Century

• DOCLINE (1985) successes:

  • Free to all libraries who entered holdings in SERHOLD
  • Government sponsored infrastructure
  • Strengthened RML system by decentralizing burden on NLM to be lender of last resort
  • Outstanding, critical service for medical articles niche

• Parallels: OCLC, RLIN routing services beyond medical articles (everything else!)

• By late 1980s/early 1990s, millions of requests flowing through each every year (but still paper output in the end)