Several databases give free access now

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Several databases give free access now

EDITORDelamothe mentions several initiatives to provide free access to biomedical literature.¹ Medline is a medical databasethat may be enough for a general search and is accessible freevia PubMed (http://pubmed.gov). For a comprehensive search, however,it can be important to search other databases too. The choicedepends on the subject area, how much time you have, and whetheryou can access databases that charge (the American and UnitedKingdom governments provide free access to somedatabases).

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews is a key source for the effectiveness of treatments. It is free to NHS staff viathe knowledge section of NeLH (www.nelh.nhs.uk/), and the abstractsare free to everyone (www.update-software.com/cochrane/). Relatedfree databases include DARE (the database of abstracts of reviewsof effectiveness), NHS EED (the NHS economic evaluation database),and HTA (health technology assessment) (all at http://agatha.york.ac.uk/welcome.htm);the Research Findings Register via NeLH; and TRIP, a databasethat searches over 55 sites of high quality medical information(www.tripdatabase.com/).

Other free databases include the Hazardous Substances Databank and Toxline for toxicology, via Toxnet (http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/).Zetoc is free at point of access to NHS staff in England via NeLH,and to higher education in the United Kingdom. At least 40% of the 19 million citations to journal articles and conference proceedingsin zetoc are in health subjects, although there are no abstractsorindexing.

Important databases are supplied by hosts for a fee. DIALOG's website gives an indication of the huge range (http://library.dialog.com/essentials.html).When searching on line for a fee, I use Medline and any of severaldatabases (the following are just some examples):

Embase for additional European and pharmacology journals, and for quicker indexing (it is included in the BMA's "Medline plus"service)
PsychINFO for academic psychology
AMED (allied and complementary medicine database) for palliative care, professions allied to medicine (members of the CharteredSociety of Physiotherapy have free access), and complementarymedicine
DHSS-Data for health administration (in addition to the large amount free on the Department of Healthwebsite)
CINAHL (the cumulative index to nursing and allied health database) or the British Nursing Index for nursing
The science or social science citation indexes (also part of the "web of science") forcitations.

Readers should check with their medical librarian if they are doing a comprehensive search, or haven't found what they needin Medline. He or she can suggest other relevant databases toaccess and can probably help to search more effectively. For example,PubMed has a lot of useful features that aren't obvious (moreinformation at www.bl.uk/services/information/blmedline.html).

Fiona McLean, health care information officer.
British Library, London NW1 2DB fiona.mclean@bl.uk

Competing interests: The British Library runs the STM online search service, provides Medline training, and produces AMEDandzetoc.

1.	Delamothe T. Navigating across medicine's electronic landscape, stopping at places with Pub or Central in their names. BMJ 2001; 323: 1120-1122[Full Text]. (10 November.)

© BMJ 2002

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