It is not necessary to talk about how important the medical databases are for the librarian work. Medline, Embase, Biosis, etc. are USA or Europe focused. Of course they include Spanish journals, but just a few of them, but the interfaces are in English, and sometimes it means a big problem for Spanish physicians. There are few Spanish databases, the most important of them is called IME (Indice Medico Español), but the quality of this database has been discussed lots of time, because is not up to date (it has no records of 2002), and because it does not use a controlled list of keywords, so searching can be sometimes difficult.
As a result or the situation, we decided to develop a new tool, completely designed and implemented in our company, in order to have all the information of the most important Spanish medical journals, with quality references (including abstracts and keywords) and up to date. We constituted an interdepartmental group and worked on the project for more than one year: design, development and testing. Once we had the database we introduced all the data from the chosen journals since 2001. This new database is called MEDES (MEDicina en Español) and includes the most important medical journals in Spain (up to 40) in 15 different therapeutic areas (endocrine, primary care, etc), a large description and a controlled keyword list. Nowadays is under the company intranet and in some specific Lilly web pages.
To create a new tool like this database is a challenge, but it is one of the most beautiful works for a medical information librarian. This article analizes the project since the beginning to the final product.
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