FAQ
Finding Medical Information in MEDLINE

Question: What is MEDLINE, and how do I use it to find information?

Answer:

MEDLINE:

- is a huge database of over 12 million article references published in biomedical journals and magazines
- is used to find references to journal articles on specific medical topics by using:
- - keywords
- - Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), which are standard terms that are assigned by the staff of the NLM
- contains citations and many author abstracts in English from more than 4300 biomedical journals published in the United States and in 70 foreign countries
- covers 1966 - the present, plus some citations from 1963 - 1965; information on identifying older journal articles can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/indexmedicus.html
- can be searched for FREE using NLM's PubMed system at http://pubmed.gov/
- - more information about PubMed is available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/pubmed.html
- more details on MEDLINE can be found in NLM's Fact Sheet on MEDLINE
- NLM encourages MEDLINE users to discuss search results with their health care provider

If you do not have Internet access:

- check to see if your local library provides Internet access
- some libraries will do searches for you (probably for a fee)
- if your local library cannot help you, contact the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) Regional Medical Libraries at 800-338-7657 for assistance

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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/usemedline.html

Last updated: 05 May 2004
First published: 01 January 1998
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