抄録
For the effective use of the ON-LINE MEDLINE (Silver Platter) and CD-ROM MEDLINE (JOIS-III) systems to obtain certain drug information, the time-lags between the publication or the arrival date of journals and their appearance in the MEDLINE systems were examined using the 1993 CD-ROM MEDLINE files. The time-lag between the arrival date at our library and the update for 11 international and 10 domestic journals in these MEDLINE systems was 3-6 months. Since the ON-LINE and CD-ROM MEDLINE systems are updated weekly and monthly, respectively, the time-lag was shorter in the former by almost one month. However, when these systems were used at the beginning (January) and end (December) of the year, the timelag was not differ. The variation in time-lags for journals was relatively large. which may be attributed to several factors such as 1) frequency of publication, 2) country of publication, 3) language used, 4) evaluation by National Library of Medicine, U. S.A. and other factors. We should know the time-lag between the arrival date of journals and the appearance in the database to avoid miss-searching the ON-LINE and CD-ROM MEDLINE systems.
