Will E-Biomed eliminate Index Medicus and Medline?
With its dependence on what appears to be a totally automated search engine, E-Biomed appears to have dispensed not only with libraries but with the NLM and its labor- intensive services. I seriously doubt that an automated search engine can adequately do the job of Medline, simply based on the preference of many authors and readers for unpredictable jargon. Wouldn’t a better idea be to upgrade Medline? Medline’s coverage might be more sophisticated. I have a report that indicates 10,000 Medline cites were screened to locate about 400 articles related to “whiplash.” More labor-intensive indexing might eliminate the monumental challenge that the literature makes to the researcher before reading and evaluating a single article. The same report indicates that less than 100 articles survived tests for scientific merit applied by teams of specialists. Medline’s coverage might be wider. Medline, a true pioneer in electronic publishing and dissemination, indexes over 400,000 articles annually
