Addressing the issue of cataloging and making chiropractic literature accessible: Part I: Defining the problem

Health science journals are a principle source of new knowledge for chiropractors, chiropractic faculty and students. Regrettably, clinically or educationally relevant articles (appearing in the nearly 20,000 journals annually) are often overlooked due to access difficulties. Innovations are needed to assist the reader to select articles relevant to chiropractic and reduce the time spent sorting through the volumes of literature. A review of the literature shows there is a trend toward database management for cataloging and accessibility of other, nonchiropractic, literature. Most notable of these is an endeavor by National Technical Information Service, commonly referred to as MEDLARS (Medline). It is interesting to note that a computer-assisted library database program does not exist on any chiropractic campus. This is in contrast with the trend on campuses of other health care fields. Manual search strategies within the chiropractic literature are time consuming, subject to a high failure rate, and even if the search produces citations, there is no assurance the journal can be accessed unless a chiropractic campus is nearby. Furthermore, difficulties exist when a chiropractic literature search is attempted in any computerized database, e.g., MEDLARS (Medline). Journals/articles that are unique to chiropractic (national, international or on the state level) are not specifically included in these computerized databases. Aside from these difficulties, there exists the problem of finding those articles that contain valid and relevant information from among those that are less valid or informative.