MEDLINE’s 45th Anniversary

This October marked the 45th anniversary of the MEDLINE (MEDLARS Online) database. While many users are aware of the freely-available PubMed interface to the MEDLINE database (which has been around for about twenty years), there are many other ways of searching MEDLINE’s content.

Here at MSK, the Medical Library provides access to MEDLINE via the OVID (Wolters Kluwer) interface, and through the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) product. It is worth noting that other databases also contain MEDLINE content even if they do not offer an exclusive search of it. For example, EMBASE and SCOPUS (both Elsevier) simultaneously search MEDLINE records as well as other bibliographic content, and CINAHL (EBSCO) also includes MEDLINE records that can be excluded from the results using a search filter/limit.  There are other openly-available alternative search interfaces to PubMed that you can learn more about via the MSK Library’s PubMed Alternative Interfaces LibGuide.

To learn more about how the MEDLINE database is structured and how its content is handled by the various search interfaces, be sure to register for an upcoming PubMed workshop or request an individual training consultation.