MEDLINE Access

by Claire Hamasu

"How do I search MEDLINE, let me count the ways..." The facility with which World Wide Web browsers can be adapted into a end-user search interface has resulted in sites offering access to MEDLINE, many of them for free. The numbers keep growing and it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. Perhaps you are being asked by your hospital staff about these different versions of MEDLINE. It is a common question asked of PSRML staff exhibiting at professional meetings. What is available and how d oes one search interface compare with another? There are resources, both printed and electronic, available to help answer these questions.

Printed Resources:

• "Searching MEDLINE on the PC" by Edward P. Hoffer (Medical Software Reviews, 5(8) August 1996 pp 1-3, 10) is an evaluation by a physician, who approached each system as a novice searcher. Included in his comparison are Web and CD-ROM access to MEDLIN E, and Alta Vista, a Web search tool.

• A good review that appeared a while back by Frances A. Brahmi and Thomas W. Emmett, is "Physicians' Online: a Free Version of Medline" (MD Computing Sep-Oct 1995, 12(5) pp 398-400). This access method is heavily marketed to physicians.

• "MEDLINE free-for-all spurs questions about search value, who pays" by Paul Engstrom (Medicine on the Net, 2(8) August 1996 pp 1-5) lists online MEDLINE providers and includes pointers for the health professional in choosing the MEDLINE to use for th eir searches.

Internet Resources:

Sporadic discussion appears in the MedLib-L listserv on different free MEDLINE versions. On other medically related lists messages may appear whenever participants discover a free MEDLINE. Deja News (http://www.dejanews.com) is a good source to retri eve these messages. It claims to have "the largest collection of indexed archived Usenet news available anywhere". A PowerSearch with filters is the best way to limit your results to a manageable number. A search can be limited by date, listserv, autho r and subject. The asterisk(*) serves as a truncation symbol and can be used before and after a word. For example to search for "bit.listserv.MedLib-L", type in *MedLib*. To limit the search to all of 1996 use 1996*. You can look for all discussion of free MEDLINE or for a specific provider, such as HealthGate, by using the subject line.

From the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital Library comes Dr. Felix's Free MEDLINE Page (www.grhlib.demon.co.uk/medline.html). Librarian, Helga Perry, "set up the page in order to collate in one place all these different free MEDLINEs that regularly crop up in discussion on both MEDLIB-L and its British equivalent LIS-MEDICAL". It provides links to web sites that offer free MEDLINE searching and annotates the list with comments from users. Librarians are especially encouraged to send their comments.

Ms. Perry saw this page as an opportunity for librarians to "use our library expertise" to help people make an informed choice. Dr. Felix's page also offers a brief bibliography of articles. These resources should assist librarians and health profess ionals monitor the free MEDLINEs as they appear.

Providers of MEDLINE sign a license agreement with the National Library of Medicine that they comply with NLM requirements for quality assurance and testing. However, NLM has never interfered with the charges (or lack of them), or the capabilities of the licensees' retrieval systems.