Eight years of online search services for medicine and health care in Hungary

Abstract

The National Medical Information Inslitute and Library has been providing online search services for medical doctors and scientists since 1 982 at reduced rates. Financial aid has been provided by the Ministry of Health in order to support national medical research projects and strategic decisions at the Ministry by literature documents retrieved through online database searching. These services have been promoted continuously for potential users and, consequently, usage has been growing steadily in spite of worsening circumslances. The number of databases both in biomedical and in related subject fields has increased. Mostly Data-Star databases have been used, joined lately by DIMDI databases. SDI services are also available, and CD-ROM services have been introduced during 1990.