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.     

An SDILINE profile oriented to patient care.

Hospital physicians naturally require current medical information in order to treat their patients. An objectively obtained SDILINE storesearch was devised to obtain this information. A rank-ordered list of hospital discharge diagnoses, coded with ICDA terms, was translated into MeSH. The top two Bradford zones of journals defined as useful at the University of Missouri--Kansas City were ANDed to these MeSH terms. Citations retrieved from the storesearch are input into an in-house computerized data base. The method can be easily used by other medical or hospital libraries without access to computers.