Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp The Library

The available databases consist of a number of bibliographic references. Each reference describes a specific publication, and consists itself of a number of structured constituents, called fields. Examples of fields: "author", "title", "journal", "year of publication", "pages", "language", "keywords", etc.

The information in some fields is directly retrievable (e.g. "author"), while other fields (e.g. "pages") have a merely descriptive function.

The available fields and their notation (abbreviation) are not identical in all databases. Consult the database-specific information for a correct use of these fields.

The databases contain exclusively bibliographical information. The actual publications are not included in "full-text" form. However, some databases also contain abstracts of the publications described.

The databases on harddisk are produced by the ITG library staff. They are generally of a selective and specialized character (except for the "catalog"-files, which obviously aim to be exhaustive) and the publications included are mostly available in the library. The other databases (on CDROM, etc.) are commercial products, purchased by the library. They generally have a broader scope and there is no close relationship with the library collections. The publications to which these refer are therefore not necessarily available in the library.

All databases are updated regularly, but the periodicity of these updates may vary greatly among different files.