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Rating: 
Summary: Now things are easier and clear when searching Medline!
Review: After reading this book I thought that it deserved a special review, this is, not the type of review that usually begins with "a must read for every clinician" but something special as this book deserves. Most of us have had already the necessity of accessing Medline database in our research but most of the times we get hit by the results that a simple search presents. We then start browsing and browsing the results and we get tired of so much information that some times does not correspond to our desires or doesn't focus on the subject we were looking for. Now what? - we ask. The answer is simple as the author says; the focus is not just on simple searching but on effective searching. Medline is a complex and very wide database and knowing some of its basic concepts will help us understanding how simple and effective can our search be made. This is what the author presents in this book, a "rutter" for easy and effective navigation in this complex and wide sea of scientific information. There are no secrets in Medline but there are basic concepts like knowing some of the 19,000 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) or just simple understanding how they are organized and how this understanding will help us to get the effective search results for our needs. This is given by the author with many examples of ways to start an effective search in Medline and thus not waste so much of our precious time browsing through the great amount of information that this resource can present. The book is very accessible in the way that the concepts are presented with many examples and a glossary for quick reference on MeSH. In a couple of hours the reader will with no doubt find this book from Brian S. Katcher an excellent guide and a valuable acquisition. I must say that after reading it, I finally understood how much precious time I've wasted in my "not guided" Medline searches. Now things are easier and clear thanks to the time, the knowledge and the effort that the author has put in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Now things are easier and clear when searching Medline!
Review: After reading this book I thought that it deserved a special review, this is, not the type of review that usually begins with "a must read for every clinician" but something special as this book deserves. Most of us have had already the necessity of accessing Medline database in our research but most of the times we get hit by the results that a simple search presents. We then start browsing and browsing the results and we get tired of so much information that some times does not correspond to our desires or doesn't focus on the subject we were looking for. Now what? - we ask. The answer is simple as the author says; the focus is not just on simple searching but on effective searching. Medline is a complex and very wide database and knowing some of its basic concepts will help us understanding how simple and effective can our search be made. This is what the author presents in this book, a "rutter" for easy and effective navigation in this complex and wide sea of scientific information. There are no secrets in Medline but there are basic concepts like knowing some of the 19,000 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) or just simple understanding how they are organized and how this understanding will help us to get the effective search results for our needs. This is given by the author with many examples of ways to start an effective search in Medline and thus not waste so much of our precious time browsing through the great amount of information that this resource can present. The book is very accessible in the way that the concepts are presented with many examples and a glossary for quick reference on MeSH. In a couple of hours the reader will with no doubt find this book from Brian S. Katcher an excellent guide and a valuable acquisition. I must say that after reading it, I finally understood how much precious time I've wasted in my "not guided" Medline searches. Now things are easier and clear thanks to the time, the knowledge and the effort that the author has put in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: After reading this book, I now know how to perform effective searches using MEDLINE. It has cut my research time considerably. My thanks go out to the author for helping make sense of a considerably complex system.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: After reading this book, I now know how to perform effective searches using MEDLINE. It has cut my research time considerably. My thanks go out to the author for helping make sense of a considerably complex system.
Rating: 
Summary: The author, Brian S. Katcher, April 20, 2000
Review: I wrote this book to help health professionals, health science students, and researchers make the most of this amazing on-line resource. The book is not dependent on any particular interface to MEDLINE. It takes only a few hours to read the main text (the 42 pages of appendixes and glossary are for reference). I think I said it best in the opening paragraphs of my Introduction:"The most remarkable thing about MEDLINE--other than its size--is the amount of human energy that has gone into indexing its contents. MEDLINE is the collective product of a small army of indexers, who have, for more than 30 years, characterized the contents of more than 4,200 journals that publish information about the causes, prevention, and treatment of disease and injury. Each of the more than ten million journal articles, letters, and editorials that are catalogued in MEDLINE has been read by a skilled indexer, who has assigned to it roughly a dozen subject headings, drawn from a controlled vocabulary of more than 19,000 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). If you understand the elaborate indexing schemes that are embodied in MEDLINE, you can use this understanding to search it with a high degree of precision. "Size is also important. Because its coverage is so broad, MEDLINE can be thought of as the index to the world's medical literature, the on-line catalogue of biomedical journal articles. It is an essential tool for assessing the scientific basis for current knowledge about health. MEDLINE is produced by the National Library of Medicine and is the largest and best organized database of its kind. But MEDLINE searching can be daunting, producing results that are too comprehensive or too limited to be useful, hence this book. "MEDLINE is a bibliographic, not a full-text database; it contains citations to the medical literature, usually with abstracts. Its full application requires reading the literature itself--in a medical library, in on-line journals, or in a personal collection of journals. "The intent of this book is the promotion of better searches and, hence, better application of what is known..."
Rating:
Summary: Best Guide to Medline
Review: This book is an invaluable guide to Medline. The instructions are extremely clear and easy to understand and the historical information is fascinating. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A must for anyone who uses Medline!
Review: This book was enjoyable to read and has proven extremely useful already. Searching Medline can be a frustrating and unproductive endeavor. This book helped me find exactly what I was looking for without tearing my hair out. This book is a must for anyone who has to locate articles in the medical literature.
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