Other titles:
Clinpsyc on CD
National Information Services Corp.
Baltimore, MD
1997
CD‐ROM disc
Keyword Psychology
Products such as these are increasingly being made available in libraries that have little in the way of expert staff support, catering for readers with very little expertise. On the other hand there is a demand in specialist libraries and information services for a high level of literature searching. In particular, with the growth of evidence‐based medicine, we are facing a demand not just for “absolutely everything on the subject, so I can make sure my PhD thesis references are complete”, nor for “a few recent accessible papers on ...”, but for precisely targeted studies that are relevant to a single clinical case.
The NISC ROM‐Wright software allows for three search modes: novice, advanced, and expert. I therefore decided to test these discs out on two other people (counting myself, for the moment, as “advanced”). My assistant, who is an expert, said that she found less differences between the expert version and the traditional set‐searching format than she had expected, but that this was slightly faster, and slightly easier to use for exploding to related terms. My wife (who originally trained as a children’s librarian, but has been working with preschool children for the past 15 years or so, and has virtually no experience of literature searching, and no interest in computers) was very happy with the novice version, and was using it effectively after only a few minutes of instruction. The advanced mode is a bit more focused, but not really very different from the novice mode. The display and output features are useful ‐ it is possible to search by the year yet sort records for output in citation format.
On the whole, this seems to be a product to be recommended to any library which does not currently have PSYCLIT and is considering installing it. A library which is used to different software will probably not find enough advantages to make it worth switching, unless there is a radical price difference. I have not been sent any information on pricing. Some years ago I wrote to the American Psychological Association, on behalf of the University of London Psychology Librarians Co‐ordinating Committee, to complain about the high pricing on PSYCLIT and got the bald reply that “The PSYCLIT database is a major source of revenue for the APA” ‐ no fig‐leaf suggestion of “public service” at all. I don’t suppose they have changed their minds since then, so many libraries may find these databases an expensive luxury.
