Bibliographic Retrieval Services Research Articles

COBISS — Co‐operative Online Bibliographic System and Services in Slovenia

In this contribution the construction and organisation of the Co‐operative Online Bibliographic System and Services (COBISS) in Slovenia is described. It is dealt with in segments, covering the communication infrastructure, products and services of the central bibliographic utility and information retrieval services of the COBISS system, online public access local library catalogues and databases and the union (co‐operative) database. The organisation of the management of the development of the COBISS system as an association of members (libraries/information centres) is presented, and a model of co‐ordination between the COBISS system as the basis of the library information system and the system of scientific information and communication on the national level is considered.

Computerized literature searching on a core internal medicine clerkship

The use, acceptance, and benefits of computerized literature searching by medical students during an internal medicine clerkship were evaluated. A year‐long prospective comparison of two student groups was performed in a community‐based medical school with five clinical sites. All third‐year medical students were required to supply two nontextbook references for each assigned patient evaluation during their core medicine clerkship. All 37 students enrolled in the second and fourth quarters of the academic year (Group 1) used the computer bibliographic retrieval service BRS Colleague® through five local modern‐equipped terminals to obtain their references. The 40 students in the first and third quarters (Group 2, controls) obtained their references without doing computer searches themselves. All Group 1 students felt capable of using the system, and 96% felt the service was helpful to their clinical learning. When compared with the control group, students using the computer search spent less time looking f...

Interlending and document delivery in the nordic countries

Fj~illbrant became the Secretary of the International Association of Technical University Libraries in 1986. She was editor of the IATUL Conference Proceedings from 1977 to 1985. Previously she was a librarian at the Hovhs Public Library; a lecturer at the Swedish College of Librarianship in Borhs; and a research assistant, lecturer, and deputy librarian at Chalmers University of Technology Library in Gothenberg. L6nnqvist is the Planning Officer for NORDINFO, the Nordic Council for Scientific Information and Research Libraries. From 1980 to 1983, she was a librarian at the interlending department of Helsinki University of Technology Library. The volume of published information is ever growing, particularly in the fields of science, technology, and medicine. Furthermore, the development of online bibliographic retrieval services and improved telecommunications has greatly increased the possibilities for finding references to documents of potential interest. As a result, few libraries can single-handedly meet the needs of their users. Complementary materials must often be obtained from external sources. Interlibrary lending and document supply in libraries and information centers have therefore grown in importance. This article will describe current interlending practices in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), and will indicate possible future developments. The Nordic countries have relatively small populations: Denmark has 5,000,000 people; Finland, 5,000,000; Iceland 250,000; Norway, 4,000,000; and Sweden, 8,000,000. Together, however, they constitute a sizeable portion of northern Europe. Finland, Norway, and Sweden extend north of the Arctic Circle, and Iceland is the most northerly country in Europe. The majority of the people live in urban areas and large parts of the countries are thinly populated. There are strong historic and cultural links between the Nordic countries. The close relationship between the languages is of special importance. Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish have developed from a common Indo-European Northern Germanic source, whereas the Finnish language belongs to the completely separate FennoUgrian group of languages. Finland, however, was pa r t of Sweden from 1155 to 1809, so a minority (6 percent) of the Finnish population still speak

Application of the office or home computer to searching the medical literature

Search of the medical literature has, until recently, most often been conducted by medical librarians. The recent development of "user friendly" systems and competition among an increasing number of commercial and non-commercial vendors now provide the opportunity to personally conduct literature searches using a home or office computer without enormous investment in time, training or equipment. Hardware requirements and general principles of computerized literature searching are described, and the various services available for individual subscription are summarized, including National Library of Medicine (NLM) MEDLINE; Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) and BRS/Saunders Colleague; PaperChase; Dialog/Knowledge Index; American Medical Association (AMA) Minet; and MEDIS.

Physical Therapy is Online

Starting with the January issue this year, the full text of Physical Therapy is available online through COLLEAGUE, a database service produced by BRS/Saunders. COLLEAGUE is a joint venture of BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Services) and W. B. Saunders, a major medical publisher. With Physical Therapy being online, comprehensive literature searches can be made of the Journal content in a matter of minutes at home or in the office or the clinic. We are honored to be the first allied health journal to be selected to participate in this program. COLLEAGUE also contains a complete text library that currently includes many scientific journals, such as The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, and The New England Journal of Medicine , and selected, recent texts published by such companies as W. B. Saunders, Churchill Livingstone, and Williams & Wilkins.…

Online in academia: a survey of online searching in US colleges and universities

Although online searching has been available to libraries since the late 1960s, it is only in very recent years that a significant number of academic institutions have begun offering information retrieval through commercial vendors such as Dialog, BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Service), and SDC's (System Development Corporation's) Orbit. Because online searching is so new compared with traditional library services, it is still developing as a standard offering in most academic libraries.

On-line Data Bases

To the Editor. —I agree with Haynes et al 1 that the physician is faced with massive amounts of published materials. Vendors such as Dialog, Knowledge Index, BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Service) Colleague, and BRS After Dark have provided data bases like MEDLINE, Excerpta Medica, and Biosis. I have used the on-line data bases for two years and have found, as you suggested, that the cost has been reasonable, the systems user friendly, and information immediately available. The searches may be done at anytime and retrieval of abstracts may be done on-line. Textbooks, eg, Scientific American Medicine , and the newsletter, The Medical Letter , will hopefully be on-line soon. There are now several reviews of the vendors and data bases. 2-6 The medical librarians in our region have been supportive, and at a recent convention of the South Central Region of Medical Librarians, they considered the topic of on-line searching by end

Online Literature-Retrieval Systems: how to get Started

Basic information describing online literature-retrieval systems is presented; the power of online searching is also discussed. The equipment, expense involved, and training necessary to perform online searching efficiently is described. An individual searcher needs only a computer terminal and a telephone; by telephone, the searcher connects with an online vendor's computer at another location. The four major U.S. vendors (Dialog, Bibliographic Retrieval Services, Systems Development Corporation, and the National Library of Medicine) are compared. A step-by-step procedure of logging in and searching is presented. Using the International Pharmaceutical Abstracts database as an example, 17 access points to locating an article via an online system are compared with only two (the subject and author index entry) of a printed service. By searching online, one can search the published literature on a specific topic in a matter of minutes. An online search is very useful when limited information is available or the search question contains a term that is not in a printed index.

PRE-MED, The BRS Current Clinical Medicine Database

PRE-MED is a current clinical medicine file which was developed by Bibliographic Retrieval Services as a companion file to MEDLWE. PRE-MED contains ciIations from 109 journals in clinical medicine, nursing, and hospital literature. PRE-MED is similar in format to MEDLINE and is updated weekly with about 500 citations. PRE-MED indexers supplement the journals' tables of contents with Medical Subjecr Headings. PRE-MED uses iilustrated in this article include bibliographic verifications, acquisitions searching, updating a MEDLINE search, and tables of contents services.

ＢＲＳ，ＪＩＰ／ＢＲＳサービス概要とＰＲＥ‐ＭＥＤ医学ファイル

BRS, one of the three largest online bibliographic retrieval services in the United States is described, with an outline of the company, its services, system commands and databases. An introduction to Japan's JIP/BRS, which began its online service in December 1981 follows. Finally, an outline of the features, including a sample search, of the PRE-MED medical database produced by BRS is presented.

ONLINE USER TRAINING

The provision of computerized bibliographic retrieval service is available at numerous libraries and information centers within the United States and in many countries throughout the world. This service requires specialized training for the users and the providers of the service. The training team is comprised of the database producer, the database vendor, the search analyst, and the end-user. This paper describes the team approach in training users in the usage of online services at a land grant academic institution.

Factors affecting future online services

Technological advances have resulted in the exponential growth of online services over the past few years and are predicted to provide ever‐increasing capabilities. However, social, economic and political factors will also influence the direction, extent and impact of such developments. Wise planners should consider the potential effects of both technological and non‐technological factors when major decisions must be made regarding information‐related commitments of time, effort and financial resources. This paper uses the example of bibliographic retrieval services to explore potential impacts upon areas of concern to the user of online services. Four types of influencing factors are addressed: the momentum already evident in historic usage trends; technological advances; actions/policies intended to enhance or control evolving services; and other social, economic and political developments which will affect future online capabilities.

Data Base Directories: A Comparative Review

Over the past decade machine‐readable data bases have grown both in number and variety. In addition to the familiar bibliographic data bases such as MEDLINE and ERIC, one now finds data bases containing such things as properties (e.g., RTECS ‐ Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances) and full text (e.g., LEXIS, a family of files that contains the full text of court decisions, statutes, regulations, and other legal materials). As data bases increase in importance as information resources, there is a growing need for printed tools which can assist librarians in their identification and use. Available tools fall into three categories: (1) guides issued by data base producers which describe the contents of a given data base and methods of searching (e.g., INSPEC Database Users' Guide); (2) guides produced by online vendors which indicate how data bases can be searched on a particular system (e.g., Lockheed's Guide to DIALOG ‐ Databases); and (3) data base directories which include coverage of data bases produced by many different organizations and processed by a variety of online vendors. The third category is the subject of this comparative review. Readers interested in the first two categories should consult Online Reference Aids: A Directory of Manuals, Guides, and Thesauri published by the California Library Authority for Systems and Services (CLASS). This publication contains information on manuals, guides, and other search aids for over 100 online data bases, including those available through the New York Times Information Bank, National Library of Medicine (NLM), Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS), Lockheed DIALOG, and System Development Corporation (SDC) ORBIT. This directory is arranged by data base name, giving ordering and price information for aids available from both data base producers and online vendors. Subject and vendor indexes are also provided.

Networking as viewed by an on‐line service

This paper describes the development of an on‐line bibliographic retrieval service, InfoLine, during a period of rapid growth of availability of data transmission networks. Special reference is made to EURONET.

Information system, data bases, and on-line services of the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology (JICST).

The JICST information processing system consists of the data-base production system, authority file management system, bibliographic retrieval system, and printed issue compiling system. The bibliographic retrieval service based on the JICST On-line Information System (JOIS-I) has been available through leased line since 1976 and now also through dial-up line, which covers five data bases: the JICST bibliographic and on-going research information files, CA Condensates, MEDLARS, and TOXLINE files. The on-line output in Japanese kanji is also available. The newly revised JOIS-II system is now being developed.

On-Line Personal Bibliographic Retrieval System

The Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) On-Line Personal Bibliographic Retrieval System was developed to assist researchers at the Center in managing personal or project-related collections of reference materials. The system supports on-line entry, storage, and retrieval of bibliographic citations for collections of books, journal articles, reprints, reports, manuscripts, other documents, and audio-visual materials.The NCCC system is intended for relatively small collections of materials (under 10,000 items) and is not intended to duplicate or compete in any way with MEDLARS, CANCERLINE, or any of the other on-line bibliographic retrieval services. It is similar in concept to Mitre's SHOEBOX (1), but is much less complex and requires far less computer resources. The major advantage of the NCCC system is that it is simple, small, and easy to use.None of the techniques used in developing the NCCC system is particularly new or innovative. Rather, several well-known approaches to bibliographic retrieval were combined to produce a system that was easy and inexpensive to develop and is easy and inexpensive to use. The system is now running on the Dartmouth College Computing system's equivalent of a Honeywell 66/DPS-3. The programs are all written in BASIC.

Current Survey of Reference Sources in Chemistry

Chemical Abstracts Service has recently introduced a new data base, CA SEARCH, which is supposed to replace CA CONDENSATES and CASIA, and which is, in effect, a combination of the two. Two major U.S. search services, Lockheed Retrieval Service (LRS) and System Development Corporation (SDC), offer access to CA SEARCH. Bibliographic Retrieval Service (BRS) will also soon load CA SEARCH, but is presently offering CA CONDENSATES.

Online User Groups

Tom Haggerty, Leader of the Washington, D.C. Online Users' Group, chaired an Online User Workshop at NICE II — the Information Industry Association sponsored meeting in Washington, D.C. in April. The Workshop was lively and well attended. A restriction on the physical size of the platform resulted in a two‐tier panel — the Panel proper and ‘First Row Participants’. On the panel Tom Haggerty was joined by Diana Danko of the Northern Ohio, ASIS group, Robert Donati of Lockheed Information Service (Dialog), Paul Hennrikus of Congressional Information Service (CIS), Marjorie Hlava of both the New Mexico and Southwestern Library Association Users Groups and Gerri Lawrence of the Kansas City Users Group. The three first row participants were Kay Durkin of Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS), Lynne Morris of the Medline Users Group of the Midwest and Susan Woodford of the New England Online Users Group.

Comparison of manual and online retrospective searching for agricultural subjects

To investigate the value of externally available computer‐based bibliographic retrieval services in agriculture, 100 retrospective searches in response to real requests for information were carried out by computer. Seventy‐five of these were paralleled using conventional manual methods and the results were analysed and compared for efficiency, cost and staff time required. The databases most frequently used were CAIN (now AGRICOLA), BIOSIS and Chemical Abstracts Condensates (searched online using Lockheed Dialog), and Medline. Online searches took one‐sixth of the staff time required for manual searching and cost much the same. Online searches tended to have higher relative recall and lower precision than manual searches of the same database. The differences in performance are due to the different entry points available in the printed and machine‐readable forms of a database. Detailed knowledge of these will enable a choice to be made of the more efficient method of searching when both manual and online searching of a database is possible. Online searches were well received by users and their use could increase the output of library and information staff engaged in retrospective searching.

Introducing and Implementing On-Line Bibliographic Retrieval Services in a Scientific Research and Development Organization

The National Bureau of Standards Library recently implemented on-line bibliographic retrieval services. Methods are given to orient and aid users in availing themselves of the services. Results are presented, based on appraisal of the services by users: value to users; most used data bases; problems requiring search revision; reasons for unsatisfactory results; purposes for request and use of search results; impact on subsequent library use; and future searching requirements. On-line capability impacts on library financing as a whole and on the library role in the community are described.