On‐line data base coverage of the on‐line information‐retrieval literature

The coverage of the literature on on‐line retrieval systems by eight major machine‐readable data bases was determined. A search profile executed on these data bases produced 397 unique references. Ranking the data bases by journal coverage, relevance percentage, and the number of relevant items retrieved only from that data base showed that at least six data bases needed to be searched to obtain a comprehensive bibliography. These six data bases, in order of productivity, are INSPEC, CA Condensates, Social Sciences Citation Index, ERIC, MEDLINE, and BIOSIS. The need for an on‐line data base in library and information science is discussed.