The View from the VA

DID YOU KNOW that the VA Library has one of the best computer assisted literature searchers in the business? (Ask anyone at the VA about the quality of his searches.) And that his experience and expertise is available to YOU at a very reasonable price: FREE!

His name is Michael M. Blanton and he has been doing Medline searching for over thirty years. A native Arkansan, he graduated from Harding University with a dual major in General Sciences and Speech Pathology/Audiology in 1967. He then went on to graduate school at LSU and received a Master of Library Science degree in 1968. After a year of postgraduate training in Science Librarianship at the University of Tennessee Medical Units in Memphis in 1969, he attended training in Medline searching at the National Library of Medicine in 1971. At that time, the training for Medline searchers at NLM was an intense three weeks of Index Medicus indexing under Thelma Cherin, the head of indexing at NLM.

Michael began his actual search experience at Sparks Regional Medical Center Library in Fort Smith where he was the Medical Librarian. The initial online system was called AIM/TWX (Abridged Index Medicus/Teletypewriter Exchange). As the name implies, the system was accessed by teletype machine and it was VERY slow!

Michael began his VA career at the VA Medical Center Library in Durham, North Carolina in 1974 as the Chief Librarian. He was there for 8 years until I selected him in 1981 to fill the vacant position of Health Sciences Librarian in Little Rock. (One of the best decisions I have ever made!)

When he first transferred to Little Rock, he began searching online using a dial-up modem and a Texas Instruments terminal. The transmission speed of 30 characters per second was considered fast at the time! The paper used was thermal and continuous feed. If exposed to light, the print faded and the paper had a nasty habit of curling up so it was hard to read.

Skipping over a few years, in the early 1990’s the Little Rock VA Library pioneered the use of a CD-ROM personal computer based version of Medline called CD-Plus [now known as OVID]. When Michael visited New York and met Mark Nelson the founder of CD-Plus/OVID he was told that the Little Rock VA Library was the first installation of his system in the world!

Reminiscing about the “good old days” in a recent conversation, Michael said “I began my career before personal computers and before the Internet/WWW. When I was trained at the University of Tennessee Medical Units ALL searching was done manually using the printed Index Medicus. The currently available versions of the Medline database and others allow trained users to perform searches that would have been impossible to do manually using printed indices. The ease and speed with which even complex searches may be performed is a delightful experience for someone trained, initially, in purely manual methods.”

Michael is not only an excellent searcher but is willing and extremely able to help in the formation of your own searches. He also is available for one on one instruction in searching various versions of Medline and other medical databases or can teach small groups. He can be reached at 257-5628 and can be found most often Monday through Friday from 7:00 to 3:30 in the Little Rock VA Library, Room 7D120.

George M. Zumwalt,
Chief, Learning Resources Service