Medline
Medline 1966 present (Medical Literature, Analysis, and Retrieval System Online), produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), is the U.S. National Library of Medicine's (NLM) premier bibliographic database that contains more than 12 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. The broad coverage of the database includes basic biomedical research and the clinical sciences since 1966 including nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, allied health, and pre-clinical sciences. MEDLINE also covers life sciences that are vital to biomedical practitioners, researchers, and educators, including some aspects of biology, environmental science, marine biology, plant and animal science as well as biophysics and chemistry. Increased coverage of life sciences began in 2000. The database also includes records that cover the field of space life science and date from 1961 to present. Examples of these records include basic bone and muscle physiology, psychological effects of isolaion, and gravitational effects on plants.
MEDLINE is indexed using NLM's controlled vocabulary, MeSH® (Medical Subject Headings). An online thesaurus is available to aid in locating MeSH® descriptors.
Abstracts, which are taken directly from the published articles, are included for more than 59% of the records added from 1975 forward. Records added before 1975 do not contain abstracts; records added from 1985 to the present have abstracts for about 69% of the records. Approximately 400,000 records are added per year, of which more than 76% are in English.
Records that previously would have been added to AIDSLINE, HealthSTAR, and Toxline are now part of the MEDLINE database. MEDLINE also contains In Process records (formerly known as PreMEDLINE). In addition, more than 100,000 records from POPLINE, formerly a standalone database available through NLM, were added to MEDLINE in 2003. These records cover family planning, contraception, fertility and population issues with data from 1980 to 2000.
Subject Coverage:
Clinical Medicine
Experimental Medicine
Dentistry
Nursing
Hospital Literature
Paramedical Professions
Communication Disorders
Population and Reproductive Biology
Pharmacology and Pharmaceuticals
Psychiatry and Psychology
Education of Health Professionals
Health Services Administration
Environment and Public Health
Veterinary Medicine
Behavioral and Mental Disorders
Health Occupations
Occupational Medicine
Nutrition
Pathology
Anatomy and Physiology
Toxicology
Medical Specialties (e.g., Cardiology, Neurology, Endocrinology, Pediatrics, Surgery,etc.)