Addressing the issue of cataloging and making accessible chiropractic literature: Part II. Pilot software development program.
Health science journals are a principle source of new knowledge for chiropractors, chiropractic faculty, and students. Regrettably, clinically or educationally relevant articles (appearing in the nearly 20,000 journals annually) are often overlooked due to access difficulties. Innovations are needed to assist the reader to select articles relevant to chiropractic and reduce the time spent sorting through the volumes of literature. A solution to those problems of accessing, obtaining, and storing article citations from the chiropractic literature come from a pilot computerized program developed for use on the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic (LACC) campus. The Chiropractic Literature Archive and Search Program (CLASP) is dedicated to chiropractic literature. It provides rapid access to the literature and directs the user to one of the participating chiropractic campuses where the article can be found. Because of its ease of operation, the program is a useful tool for nearly all areas of chiropractic, ranging from education and research to clinical patient management. The program would be inexpensive to fully implement, and the hardware needed is minimal. Important protocols have been developed for database input, use and maintenance. Testing of this program on the LACC campus reveals that such a program is capable of making citations of the chiropractic literature available within days of their publication.