National Library of Medicine, Office of Acquisitions Management, 8600 Rockville Pike, Building 38A, Room B1N17, Bethesda, Maryland 20894

R -- EDITING AND DATA ENTRY SERVICES SOL RFP NLM 95-111/MDW DUE 072695 POC MoniQue D. Woodard, Contract Specialist (301) 496-6546. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) of the National Institutes of Health requires editing, data entry, proofreading, and online error correction services for up to 450,000 bibliographic citations and 337,500 abstracts per year, as preparation for inclusion in NLM's Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS). Editing involves selecting, from biomedical journals provided by NLM, articles that meet NLM's subject and format criteria, and identifying descriptive material (author, title, affiliation, support, etc.) in journal articles written in English and a variety of foreign languages (including Russian, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, and Japanese, among others). Editing is required for more than 99 percent of the MEDLARS citations, and must be done in accordance with policies and practices set forth in the MEDLARS Indexing Manual and other technical issuances. Data entry involves converting citations and abstracts to machine readable form for input into NLM's Automated Indexing Management System (AIMS). Whether it is performed as part of the editing or data entry process, bibliographic citations must be reformatted to NLM's style: for example, authors must be entered as surname followed by no more than two initials; and article titles must have only the initial word capitalized, except for proper nouns, genus names, etc. Approximately 14 percent of the data are in a foreign language and may require the input of a substitution string for diacritics. Data must be transmitted daily to NLM's IBM 3090 computer. A communications link must be established that is compatible with IBM 3770 protocols or other compatible transmission methods in order to recieve and print transaction listings transmitted from NLM. A backup capability for delivery of data via 6250 bpi reel to reel magnetic tape or 6250 bpi tape cartridge for a 3420 cartridge drive is also required. Offerors must have the capability of establishing a second communications link to the NLM computer to perform online error correction at a minimum rate of 4800 baud (9600 baud is available). Proofreading and online corrections to stringent levels of accuracy are required. All prior acquisitions of these services have assumed that keystroking would be used for data entry. NLM has not, itself, been able to attain the required degree of accuracy by OCR scanning of bibliographic data, given the requirements for reformatting author names, capitalization of titles, and handling signs and symbols in the text of titles and abstracts, in a large number of journals printed in a wide array of languages, typefaces, paper thickness and page layouts. Nevertheless, NLM is willing to consider proposals for methods of data entry other than keyboarding, but must be assured that these methods will yield citations that meet NLM's qualitative criteria. A daily volume of up to 1,950,000 characters is required, with a maximum turnaround time of 5 working days (4 working days would be preferable) from receipt of source material to delivery of acceptable citations and abstracts, and return of source material. Actual workload may fluctuate in excess of plus or minus 25%. Daily pickup and delivery by the contractor is required at NLM, Bethesda, Maryland. All proposed editing and data entry staff must show evidence of previous training or comparable experience in data entry of scientific bibliographic information. In addition to technical expertise, interested firms must have previous successful experience in management and completion of relevant projects within the last five years, reflecting effective planning and staffing and a high level of performance in data entry activities. It is anticiapted that a one year, fixed price, indefinite delivery (indefinite quantity) type contract will be awarded. The contract will contain options for three (3) successive one-year periods as well as options for additional quantities in each year. The Request for Proposal (RFP) will be available approximately fifteen calendar days from publication of this announcement. All responsible sources may submit a proposal which will be considered by the National Library of Medicine, Office of Acquisitions Management, 8600 Rockville Pike, Building 38A, Room B1N17, Bethesda, Maryland 20894, Attention: MoniQue D. Woodard, Contract Specialist. Telephone and fax requests will not be accepted. (0160)

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