TY - JOUR
T1 - Self-service computerized bibliographic retrieval
T2 - A comparison of colleague and PaperChase, programs that search the MEDLINE data base
AU - Porter, Douglas
AU - Wigton, Robert S.
AU - Reidelbach, Marie A.
AU - Bleich, Howard L.
AU - Slack, Warner V.
N1 - Funding Information:
Since this study was sponsored by Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, the provider of PaperChase, extraordinary precautions were needed to guard against bias. To help readers make their own determination about the possibility of
PY - 1988/10
Y1 - 1988/10
N2 - Colleague and PaperChase are the two most widely used computer systems designed specifically for clinicians and scientists who wish to search the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE data base of references to the biomedical literature. The present study compares the performance of these two systems. Two matched groups of second-year medical students each received 3 hr of instruction, one group in Colleague, the other in PaperChase. Each student then attempted 10 test searches. The next day the groups were reversed, and each student attempted 5 additional searches. During 3 1 2hr allocated for searching, users of Colleague attempted 64 test searches and retrieved 326 target references: users of PaperChase attempted 78 searches and retrieved 496. Users of Colleague took a mean of 2.2 min and spent a mean of $1.20 to find each target reference; users of PaperChase took 1.6 min and spent $0.92. We conclude that after limited training, medical students find more references faster and at lower cost with PaperChase than with Colleague.
AB - Colleague and PaperChase are the two most widely used computer systems designed specifically for clinicians and scientists who wish to search the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE data base of references to the biomedical literature. The present study compares the performance of these two systems. Two matched groups of second-year medical students each received 3 hr of instruction, one group in Colleague, the other in PaperChase. Each student then attempted 10 test searches. The next day the groups were reversed, and each student attempted 5 additional searches. During 3 1 2hr allocated for searching, users of Colleague attempted 64 test searches and retrieved 326 target references: users of PaperChase attempted 78 searches and retrieved 496. Users of Colleague took a mean of 2.2 min and spent a mean of $1.20 to find each target reference; users of PaperChase took 1.6 min and spent $0.92. We conclude that after limited training, medical students find more references faster and at lower cost with PaperChase than with Colleague.
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U2 - 10.1016/0010-4809(88)90007-9
DO - 10.1016/0010-4809(88)90007-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 3053026
AN - SCOPUS:0023711167
SN - 1532-0464
VL - 21
SP - 488
EP - 501
JO - Journal of Biomedical Informatics
JF - Journal of Biomedical Informatics
IS - 5
ER -