Ch. 10— Information Resources and Computer Systems • 231 
Table 10-2.— Examples of Databases Available 3 for Searches of Literature 
Involving Animal Research and Testing (Continued) 
Database 
Description 
First year 
covered 
SOCIAL SCISEARCH 
Worldwide coverage of social and behavioral sciences literature; from the Institute 
for Scientific Information 
1972 
TELEGEN 
Covers literature on biotechnology and genetic engineering in 7,000 sources includ- 
ing conference and symposia papers, government studies, periodicals, and the popu- 
lar press; from Environment Information Center, Inc. 
1973 
Zoological Record 
Covers zoological literature from 6,000 journals; from BioSciences Information Serv- 
ice and the Zooloaical Society of London 
1978 
a These databases are available by telephone connection to one or more of the following: Lockheed Information System DIALOG, System Development Corp.’s ORBIT, 
and Bibliographic Retrieval Service, Inc. 
SOURCE: Adapted from R.V. Smith, Graduate Research (Philadelphia, PA: ISI Press, 1984). 
Table 10-3.— Examples of On-Line Databases of the National Library of Medicine 
Name Description 
Number of records 
(average length) Type of record 
MEDLINE 1966-present. Bibliographic citations and abstracts from 
primary biomedical literature 
TOXLINE 1965-present. Abstracts from primary toxicological literature 
CHEMLINE 
RTECS 
Dictionary to chemicals contained in TOXLINE and other MED- 
LARS data bases 
Brief summaries of toxicity results from primary literature 
TDB Detailed chemical, pharmacological, and toxicological data and 
extracts from monographs and handbooks 
SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment. 
3.300.000 
(1,250 char.) 
1.400.000 
(1,050 char.) 
500,000 
(275 char.) 
68,000 
(1,000 char.) 
4,000 
(17,000 char.) 
Bibliographic 
Bibliographic 
Chemical compound 
Chemical compound 
Chemical compound 
negative results, its size would be increased by an 
estimated 10 to 15 percent (11). RTECS is avail- 
able in hard copy (19), on microfiche, on magnetic 
tape, and on-line from both the MEDLINE service 
of NLM and the Chemical Information System, a 
joint resource of several Federal agencies that is 
managed by EPA. 
On-Line Literature 
The research community makes use of a num- 
ber of computerized literature retrieval services 
to obtain bibliographic citations and abstracts from 
primary literature. Among these, for example, is 
NLM’s MEDLINE database, a bibliographic file now 
exceeding 3,300,000 entries. In the private sector, 
BioSciences Information Services prepares hun- 
dreds of thousands of abstracts each year, pro- 
viding access to essentially the entire published 
biological research literature. However, the re- 
search community is not presently served by a 
computerized database that includes comprehen- 
sive descriptions both of experimental protocols 
and of the resulting data. 
Movement toward on-line delivery of the full text 
of scientific publications has begun in the private 
sector. For example, Mead Data Central (Dayton, 
OH) offers MEDIS, a medical literature database. 
In 1985, the MEDIS service included about 70 pub- 
lications, with some stored journal articles going 
back to 1980. MEDIS includes the full text of the 
Journal of the American Medical Association (since 
1982), Archives of Internal Medicine , and some 
textbooks and newsletters. In 1984, Bibliographic 
Retrieval Services (Latham, NY) joined with pub- 
lisher W.B. Saunders Company to offer the full 
text of the New England Journal of Medicine and 
several other journals on-line. A serious limitation 
to any current full-text literature retrieval system 
is the inability to retrieve graphs, photographs, 
and other images (7). 
