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As librarians employed in two chiropractic colleges, we applaud your proposed series on how to find and use the scientific literature. The stated purpose of the first article in this series is to focus primarily on providing some access fundamentals, with suggestions on how to effectively use them. The author touched on a number of topics, including how to formulate a research question, where and how to search, and how to interpret statistics. Any one of these deserves to be the focus of a separate article, and all would be welcomed by your readers. We would like to comment on the section of the article in which you highlight PubMed, Where to Start.
PubMed is unquestionably a valuable resource for chiropractors. However, its coverage of purely chiropractic journals is limited to JMPT (1982 to the present), Chiropractic History (1981-2000) and Chiropractic & Osteopathy (2005+). For those wishing to search the chiropractic literature beyond these journals, the Index to Chiropractic Literature (ICL) is the database of choice, and it’s free. The Chiropractic Library Consortium’s librarians have indexed in ICL all peer-reviewed chiropractic journals from 1985. Thanks to a 2004 grant from the Association of Chiropractic Colleges, we have been able to make many improvements over the past year, and we encourage JACA Online readers to give ICL a try at www.chiroindex.org.
As librarians we always encourage our chiropractic students to search a variety of databases, and these include CINAHL, Alt HealthWatch, MANTIS and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. We realize that many chiropractors do not have access to these resources. There are, however, some free, high-quality databases available, many of which are listed on ICL’s Further Resources page at www.chiroindex.org/resources.php.
Even if chiropractors limit their literature searches to PubMed and ICL, they stand a good chance of discovering much of the peer-reviewed chiropractic literature. Correctly interpreting and putting into practice the lessons from this literature will lead to better health care decisions, and ultimately, to improved patient outcomes, the goal of evidence-based chiropractic.
Phyllis Harvey MLn (Palmer College of Chiropractic), ICL Editor
Anne Taylor-Vaisey MLS (Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College), ICL Co-Editor & Web Editor
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