New Web Tool for Finding Information on Dietary Supplements
Agricultural Research Service, USDA, January 6, 1999

The Agriculture Department's National Agricultural Library (NAL) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a new Internet site in January to help researchers and the general public find information on dietary supplements.

The site hosts a new database, the International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS). It contains published, international scientific literature on dietary supplements from 1986 to the present.

"In recent years, there has been a burgeoning market in dietary supplements and confusing claims made about some of them," said Pamela Andre, director of the NAL, part of USDA's Agricultural Research Service. "As a result, Congress directed NIH to promote and provide support for research on supplements. The new database will be a tremendous step toward meeting this requirement."

The web site offers a drop-down list of keywords to use as search tools to aid those unfamiliar with the terminology. Visitors to the site can simultaneously search multiple existing medical, pharmaceutical, botanical, and agricultural databases. The IBIDS Internet address is:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/IBIDS/

The database contains 250,000 records on journal articles. It is the only database that specifically focuses on research from medical journals and other sources on dietary supplements. Work on IBIDS was begun in 1996 by the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and the Food and Nutrition Information Center of NAL.

"NIH sought the library's assistance because we are a federal leader in establishing and maintaining research databases and managing electronic information," Andre said. "Both NAL and the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements are tremendously proud of the product we have crafted."

ARS News Service contact: Brian Norris, (301) 504-6778, bnorris@nal.usda.gov

Scientific contact: Virginia Hartmuller, Food and Nutrition Information Center, ARS National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Md., phone (301) 504- 5414, fax (301) 504-6409, vhartmul@nal.usda.gov.