The UF librarians reviewed OVID. Generally, most liked the search interface. The layout and buttons and graphics are visually pleasing. Most also felt that these qualities should make searching the database easy for the novice user. As well, the search engine retains many of the more difficult search functions that would allow the more experienced user or librarian to do precision searching. One searcher found that because the searches are "staked" it makes the database less appealing but not insurmountable.

The help screens are very complete. However they are complex; for example, I and others had to read the truncation section several times before comprehending it. Several librarians thought that this could have been because the truncation function is more sophisticated than most that we have seen. One of our searchers noted that when searching BIOSIS, using the keywords "cancer" and "gene" without using truncation, the results included generated and syngeneic. This person questioned why. And indicted that it's as though "gene" was searched as a string anywhere in a word. This searcher did not note this phenomenon anywhere else, so perhaps this is unique to BIOSIS. If so, this could be annoying. Another point of view: searching "imagination and art," one gets both "art" and "artistic." ("not necessarily a bad thing").

PsycLIT was also termed "great". Generally, staff like the Thesaurus, although almost all indicated that it took a while to learn how to use it. When reviewing the OVID homepage, both PsycLIT and PsycINFO are available, but PsycINFO does not go back to 1887 as does our WebLUIS coverage which is very important to us.

Those who tried the email function liked it, especially the options at the bottom of the screen that guide the user.

OVID, geared toward the sciences and medicine; fulltext journal coverage seems exclusively devoted to the sciences.

We already have a number of the social science, humanities and general reference databases listed on the homepage.

Submitted by: Carolyn Henderson Allen, Deputy Director of University Libraries, University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries