The Foreign biomedical databanks : a survey of their access in France and a study about the training needs of the university libraries.

For many years, teachers, searchers and students have been using online bibliographical information in medicine and pharmacy departments of university libraries. If foreign databanks are most consulted, users are also interested in French files. Since 1982, access to the main foreign databanks of the biomedical field changed. An investigation has been made by the Training department of the Directorate of libraries, museums and scientific and technical information (DBMIST), in order to assess the services provided by the various dealers for users of the National library of medicine, EXCERPTA MEDICA and BIOSIS databanks. The Training department has also held an inquiry among university libraries of medicine and pharmacy, in order to study the present state of online searching and to estimate the needs of training for foreign biomedical databanks. From this inquiry, it emerges that the users'wish is to increase and to diversify databanks, provided that the number of softwares remains limited.
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