⌡MEDLINE≡¿, the bibliographic database of the ⌡National Library of Medicine≡, is the primary source in the United States for information from the biomedical literature. It is the computerized counterpart of ⌡Index Medicus≡, and also contains citations that appear in the ⌡Index to Dental Literature≡ and the ⌡International Nursing Index≡. MEDLINE contains references to articles from more than 3200 journals, selected for inclusion because of their importance to health professionals.
Each reference to an article in MEDLINE is called a ⌡record≡ or a bibliographic ⌡citation≡ (and these are in turn divided into ⌡Fields≡). The full text of the articles is not in MEDLINE, but approximately half of the citations contain abstracts (summaries) written by the article's author. MEDLINE is international in scope; approximately 75% of the citations are published in English.
MEDLINE includes such topics as: microbiology, delivery of health care, nutrition, pharmacology, and environmental health. The categories covered by MEDLINE include: anatomy; organisms; diseases; chemicals and drugs; technics and equipment; psychiatry and psychology; biological sciences; physical sciences; social sciences and education; technology, agriculture, food, industry; humanities; information science and communications; and health care.
