PC Jock

[Joe Bruman <jrbruman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(1 Aug 97)
PC Jock:

Sharp-eyed readers of this month's Current Science Reviews will have
noticed some changes, mainly several added source journals. This is
due to the opening of Medline, the great database of the National
Library of Medicine, a month ago to eleemosynary use. This generous
move prompted me to upgrade my Internet service account to one which
gives access to so-called web sites, of which Medline is one. After
the usual struggle I got this working, and will share this brief
experience so other listmembers can try it.

The Medline database contains title citations and abstracts of all
the articles in virtually every scholarly periodical (there are
thousands) in the field of medicine. Currently two free search
programs are offered, and the one I recommend is PubMed. To use it
you only need to "open"

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed

and the screen will tell you what to do next. You can search by all
the common categories: Author, Journal, Keyword in text or title,
and get a list of "hits" with the option to see any abstract you
wish. A rare positive example of Your Tax Dollars At Work.

On another subject: The monthly Index I have been posting with the
Current Science Reviews is apparently too big, at 8+ pages, to go
as a single e-mail message. Suggestions welcome, but I'll suspend
posting while deciding what to do about it.

Cheers, Joe