Databases
WHOLIS & IRIS
WHOLIS is the World Health Organization's library database. WHOLIS indexes all WHO publications from 1948 onwards and articles from WHO-produced journals and technical documents from 1986 to the present. An on-site card catalogue, organized by subject headings, provides access to the pre-1985 technical documents.
Thousands of WHO publications and technical documents in digital format are already available online through WHOLIS. This number will increase as access to WHO materials in all available languages improves with the upcoming implementation of the Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS).
IRIS will provide WHO’s information products in digital format from a single location (URL) with a multilingual interface. Its content will be freely accessible and searchable initially in the six official languages.
WHO Regional Databases
Regional health and medical databases have been compiled to complement the internationally known bibliographical indexes such as MEDLINE from the US National Library of Medicine. Although most of the significant medical periodicals published in developed countries are indexed in the MEDLINE database and similar tools, there is still a considerable amount of important and valuable medical and health documentation from countries outside the major industrialized areas which is not included. This material therefore receives less global visibility inspite of its often higher relevance for other developing countries.
The Regional medical indexes, published by or under the auspices of WHO Regional Offices give access to bibliographical information about the health material published locally. They thus add a further dimension to the retrieval of information from developed country-oriented databases.
Related Link
PubMed
PubMed a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), provides free access to over 11 million citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed also provides links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.