Application of the office or home computer to searching the medical literature

Search of the medical literature has, until recently, most often been conducted by medical librarians. The recent development of "user friendly" systems and competition among an increasing number of commercial and non-commercial vendors now provide the opportunity to personally conduct literature searches using a home or office computer without enormous investment in time, training or equipment. Hardware requirements and general principles of computerized literature searching are described, and the various services available for individual subscription are summarized, including National Library of Medicine (NLM) MEDLINE; Bibliographic Retrieval Services (BRS) and BRS/Saunders Colleague; PaperChase; Dialog/Knowledge Index; American Medical Association (AMA) Minet; and MEDIS.