Importance of digital information sources for medical professionals

Medical librarianship is fundamental to the practice of health care and to medical education and research. Its necessity in the whole functioning of library services is directly related to the importance of which individuals and society give to medical services. Medical libraries are important for the organization and retrieval of the vast and continuously expanding fields of knowledge in the health sciences and thus to the effective delivery of health care.The emergence of World Wide Web (WWW) in 1991 has made instantaneous access to much of the body of medical literature as in many other fields. It provides several opportunities for the medical professionals. This easy to use information system with hypertext and multimedia capabilities has made the Web a viable medium of information storage and retrieval. Many publishers are also making use of the capabilities of Web in providing database services. Today a daunting array of web resources which include hundreds of databases and thousands of electronic journals are available to the users.