EBSCO Medline full-text
As previously noted, EBSCO is now offering a Medline with Full Text product.
I asked my very helpful contacts at EBSCO for a trial of it and checked it out, making notes about how it compared to PubMed and OVID. I’ve never used an EBSCO clinical database before, but here are a few thoughts.
Search Interface
The EBSCO Medline search interface resembles very much the interface with which I am familiar from use of EBSCO’s MasterFile Select, with some additional limitters and filters:
- English Language
- EBM Reviews
- Review Articles
- Human
- Animal
- Gender
- Age Related
- Subject Subset
- Journal & Citation Subset
- Publication Type
- Languages
- Animals
- Also search for related words
- Also search within the full text of the articles
- Automatically “And” search terms
These are very similar to the filters available in PubMed via the Limits tab, but I find the PubMed interface easier on the eye and more intutive to use.
An OVID side-note:
On one occassion, it occurred to me that I would like our library’s users in nursing to have a limitter they could choose to check in OVID that would limit the search only to nursing journals. After a brief discussion with OVID tech support, they added this limitter to our hospital’s interface inside of a day. I’d be curious to know if EBSCO can create custom filters in the same manner.
Purchasing Options
But the biggest reason that our library won’t be switching to EBSCO from OVID involves purchasing options.
Our library buys access to OVID and a shared list of journals through a consortium, and adds titles ala carte that we want and aren’t purchased by the consortium.
If we were to switch to OVID, we’d have two options to choose from:
- EBSCO Medline with Full Text
- 1,014 Full Text Titles
- EBSCO Medline
- 179 Full Text Titles
My EBSCO sales rep tells me that titles are not available a la carte, so there’s no option in between these two numbers- and that’s a serious impediment for my library ever going with EBSCO Medline.
I really enjoyed checking it out, though- and can’t wait to check it out again when the search interface is improved and the purchasing options are more flexible.
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