This column addresses questions that clinicians commonly ask medical librarians, with the goals of providing information about the various resources offered by medical libraries and of promoting collaboration between PAs and medical librarians. Do you have a question for a medical librarian? Send your question to ask.a.librarian.jaapa@gmail.com.

Question: Do you recommend Google Scholar? When I use it, I am not sure what databases it is pulling information from or whether it omits certain databases. Is there any advantage to this resource over Medline?

Answer: When thinking about what searching tool to use, it's important to consider what you're trying to achieve. Just as with other kinds of “tools”—cooking, gardening, carpentry—which one you select will depend on what you're trying to accomplish. Medline, for many purposes, will probably be the best database to search for answers to clinical questions. It's constructed in a largely transparent way—we know what journals are included, in what order results are presented, how age groups are tagged, etc. That transparency leads to confidence in what we're retrieving. Google Scholar lacks this transparency. We don't know what content we're searching, results are returned in an order that only Google Scholar understands (a recent search for diabetic ketoacidosis returned a1979 article at the top of the list!), and searching is much cruder.

But Google Scholar searches some portion of full text, which Medline does not, and Google Scholar searches content beyond journal literature. So, Google Scholar, for all its limitations, can be a valuable adjunct when trying to locate articles on obscure or extremely specific topics, for instance. Different tools for different jobs—that's usually the secret to success.

Question: I see patients in a private practice setting without academic access. Can you advise me on how PAs and other providers in my situation can access medical literature?

Answer: Accessing articles for health professionals like yourself, who work in a setting without library services, is a big issue in the medical librarian field. There are many possible solutions, depending on your location.

For example, Seattle-area providers can come to the University of Washington Health Sciences Library and use the resources, although they can't use the resources remotely unless they are affiliated with the university. There may be a university in your area that has such a policy, where you could go and print the articles for a per-page charge. You may also have alumni privileges at your PA school that would allow you to access the resources there.

Additionally, there may be an arrangement for health professionals in your state through a state library, or some other arrangement similar to the one in the state of Washington, where PAs pay through professional license fees for access to some resources through a program called Heal-WA. You can definitely obtain articles for a fee through a service called Loansome Doc, where you sign up with a library, usually an academic library, to request articles found through them. This can get expensive if you need lots of articles, though.

PAs doing locums work, or as contractors, may also have access to library services through the contracting company. (And if you don't, you should!) To find out about the best options for you in your region, you can contact the National Network of Libraries of Medicine at (800) 338-7657.

Jim Anderson is the PA-NP Supervisor, Department of Orthopedics, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, Washington, and a member of the JAAPA editorial board. Susan Klawansky is a medical librarian at Seattle Children's Hospital.