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Diana Reinstein
Community-General Hospital Syracuse, NY

JAMA. 1988;259(13):1944-1945.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—I heartily applaud your recent MEDICAL NEWS & PERSPECTIVES articles^1,2 about medical libraries. It's about time! Nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out some incorrect and misleading statements in your articles. First, to state that "a physician can obtain information without an intermediary" (referring to on-line literature searching) is something of an oversimplification. True, there are physicians and other health professionals who do their own searching, but they are by far the minority, as it is still a complex undertaking.

Second, I think that the statement by Kent Mayfield, PhD, of the Medical Library Association must have been quoted out of context. Hospital libraries are certainly not moving "much more" slowly into the computer environment. In fact, many hospital libraries were among the first to become involved with on-line searching. It is true that most hospital libraries are not heavily involved in projects such as IAIMS, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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