MEDLINE Complete

MEDLINE Complete is an EBSCO database which offers an alternative interface for accessing MEDLINE, and includes full-text of over 2,000 of the journals included in MEDLINE. As such, it includes primarily academic journals with some gray literature from government agencies and NGOs such as the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and the WHO (World Health Organization). MEDLINE Complete includes MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) indexing and filters similar to those provided in PubMed, but the filters are not as well integrated into the interface as they are in PubMed. The search interface and indexing also have some quirks that librarians will want to be aware of. The main value-added feature of MEDLINE Complete, however, is the full-text access it provides, and this is likely to be the deciding factor for purchase. For libraries that subscribe to EBSCO’s MEDLINE with Full-text (a version of the database with full-text access to fewer publications) or are interested in acquiring integrated full-text access to a large group of biomedical journals, MEDLINE Complete may be appealing. On the other hand, MEDLINE Complete is less friendly to advanced medical searching than PubMed is. Depending on the existing full-text resources and patron needs at individual libraries, MEDLINE Complete may or may not be an improvement over integrating full-text from other vendors into the PubMed interface.