Evaluation of the National Library of Medicine's Programs in the Medical Behavior Sciences. An Analysis of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Handling of the Medical Behavioral Sciences (MBS) Literatures: Some Research Tests of Methods for Evaluating Bibliographic Databases - Executive Summary

摘要

The overall purpose of NLM 82-302 is to assess the adequacy of NLM programs in medical behavioral science and ancillary fields. This study focuses on assessing bibliographic services in order to provide a systematic approach to bibliographic service evaluation that can be used in the future as a routine method for regular review of NLM performance in this area. The project is a comparative evaluation of the adequacy of the online bibliographic search services of the Library. It compares the performance of MEDLARS with that of alternative databases and search systems. Findings are expected to lead to better informed policy decisions regarding literature coverage, indexing practices, and changes in the controlled vocabulary.