The PILOTS Database (Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress, http://www.ncptsd.org/PILOTS.html) is a bibliographic database devoted to indexing the post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) literature. It is produced by the National Center for Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorders. While this center and The PILOTS Database is sponsored by the US Department of Veteran Affairs, its coverage extends to the entire PTSD and related disorder literature and not simply to that which concerns veterans.
The goal of The PILOTS Database is the complete coverage of its topic, and the compilers have done an admirable job. It contains close to 17,000 records and is international in scope. While one record goes back as far as 1871, the bulk of the records contain references to literature published between 1913 and 2000. The database producers include almost anything they can find on the subject of PTSD and related conditions. Unlike related databases, they do not limit themselves to peer‐reviewed journal articles or books, but also include the popular literature, pamphlets, book chapters ‐ anything except newspaper articles, letters in popular magazines, book reviews, and unpublished materials. The citations include full bibliographic information, subject descriptors, and an abstract. (I was only able to find one article without an abstract, and this may have been due to the article being written in Danish.) This is, however, a bibliographic database ‐ there is no full text.
As the search interface, PILOTS uses the Dartmouth College Information System (DCIS). Minimal graphics makes the Web version quick to load, even over a modem, but the database producer also still supports a harder to use Telnet version. The Dartmouth interface is easy to use and has a basic and advanced search mode. The basic search features two search boxes with pull‐down menus to search within the 14 indexes and a pull‐down menu for the Boolean operator; the advanced search allows for more complicated Boolean expressions. There is also a “browse” function enabling users to browse the various indexes.
Display options for the results of a search allow users to sort by author, title, or year. The interface also includes formatting for importing the citations into ProCite and EndNote. The indexes include the standards such as author, title, year, and descriptors, but also some interesting things such as the names of a test or measurement ‐ something that would be useful for someone researching how a particular scale or test is used in measuring stress. One drawback of the search engine is that users must remember to save marked items before going to the next page of records in the set. Fortunately, there is an indicator of the number of saved marked records that serves as a reminder.
There is more to this site than just The PILOTS Database. The National Center for Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorders’ Web site (http://www.ncptsd.org) is a good source of information on PTSD. There is also much information on The PILOTS Database itself, but some of the pages are a little dated as far as the date of last update goes (a few of the pages were last revised in 1997). Fortunately, the database itself is up to date, including items published in 2000.
As the supporting site points out in the introduction to the PILOTS thesaurus, the PTSD literature is complex due to the various audiences for which it is produced. This is further complicated by the international scope of the database. To make searching easier, PILOTS uses an internal thesaurus of more than 800 terms arranged hierarchically in a way that makes it relatively easy to see the relationships between the terms. The database producers also include information on how they make the determination of which descriptor to assign. This and their Instruments Authority List, a list of the assessment instruments used in the work reported, are major strengths.
There are many databases where one can find references for PTSD articles and information ‐ MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Embase, and Sociological Abstracts are but a few. None of these is as comprehensive or as detailed as PILOTS. As an example, running searches against MEDLINE and PILOTS I could find no citations that PILOTS missed that MEDLINE had. Also, MEDLINE has only 5,500 citations going back to 1966 compared to PILOTS’ 17,000. There is, however, a currency difference. PILOTS is less current than MEDLINE, so if currency is key, users should run a search in both MEDLINE and PsycINFO to make certain that the last year was covered.
I highly recommend PILOTS for those interested in the post‐traumatic stress research. Its size, scope, authority control, and extensive thesaurus make it a truly unique and comprehensive tool.
