New web tool for finding info on dietary supplements.

USDA's National Agricultural Library (NAL) and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have launched a new Internet site to help researchers find information on dietary supplements. The site hosts the new International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS) database. It contains published international scientific literature on dietary supplements from 1986 to the present.

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning market in dietary supplements and confusing claims made about some of them. As a result, Congress directed NIH to promote and provide support for research on the supplements. The web site offers a drop-down list of keywords to use as search tools to aid those unfamiliar with the terminology. Visitors to the site can simultaneously search multiple existing medical, pharmaceutical, botanical and agricultural databases. The IBIDS Internet address is: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/IBIDS.

The database contains 250,000 records on journal articles. It is the only database that specifically focuses on research from medical journals and other sources covering dietary supplements. Work on IBIDS began in 1996 by the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and the Food and Nutrition Information Center of the NAL. The development of IBIDS required work by those with expertise in producing bibliographic searches.

IBIDS is updated monthly and quarterly, depending on the publication frequency of the journals that are most frequently cited in IBIDS. In addition, the search strategy will be reviewed periodically to reflect any changes in dietary supplement research.

IBIDS is available to the public free of charge through a search engine. The search engine, which is the method used to search the database, was designed to be user-friendly. This design allows users with all levels of expertise to quickly search the database for the information they desire. For example, to search for scientific articles pertaining to Vitamin E, a user would type a phrase in the term box. An advanced search method is also available to enable users to search for various combinations of terms to make a search more specific.

Further information. Virginia Hartmuller, Food and Nutrition Information Center, ARS National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD; phone: [phone]; fax: [phone]; email: [e-mail].