Accessing the Lay Drug Literature: A Comparison of Dialog,BRS,and Wilsonline *

The use of online computer searching in drug information is now a standard of practice. The literature in this area, to date, has involved accessing medical and scientific literature exclusively. Drug information practitioners are often asked questions that have their origin in the lay or public literature. This literature can be difficult to locate and substantiate. It is often necessary, however, to identify the original source of such a question before turning to the medical literature

We utilized the first 40 questions received by our drug information service that required a lay literature search as our sample. We tested the quantity and uniqueness of lay literature citation retrieval from three common online services (Dialog, BRS, and Wilsonline)

Of the 12 subfiles evaluated, Magazine Index and National Newspaper Index, both from Dialog, had the highest mean quantitative citation retrieval. The wire services (United Press International and Washington Post Index) had high mean unique citation retrieval. Drug Information/Alcohol Use-Abuse Index from BRS had good citation retrieval for drugs of abuse.