MEDLINE training within the library school curriculum: quality control and future trends.

In order to assess the current status of MEDLINE training provided by schools of library science, a survey was conducted of those schools having an educational identification code issued by the National Library of Medicine. Information was gathered on such variables as the instructors' background and preparation, the course objectives and content, and the amount of on-line experience provided to students in each of eleven programs. An evaluation of these measures indicates that more opportunities to gain experience in using MEDLINE should be initiated by library schools and that current efforts should be continued and expanded. Specific recommendations for accomplishing these goals are outlined; they are addressed to health sciences librarians, library school educators, the Medical Library Association, and the National Library of Medicine.     

Indexing consistency in MEDLINE

The quality of indexing of periodicals in a bibliographic data base cannot be measured directly, as there is no one "correct" way to index an item. However, consistency can be used to measure the reliability of indexing. To measure consistency in MEDLINE, 760 twice-indexed articles from 42 periodical issues were identified in the data base, and their indexing compared. Consistency, expressed as a percentage, was measured using Hooper's equation. Overall, checktags had the highest consistency. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and subheadings were applied more consistently to central concepts than to peripheral points. When subheadings were added to a main heading, consistency was lowered. "Floating" subheadings were more consistent than were attached subheadings. Indexing consistency was not affected by journal indexing priority, language, or length of the article. Terms from MeSH Tree Structure categories A, B, and D appeared more often than expected in the high-consistency articles; whereas terms from categories E, F, H, and N appeared more often than expected in the low-consistency articles. MEDLINE, with its excellent controlled vocabulary, exemplary quality control, and highly trained indexers, probably represents the state of the art in manually indexed data bases.