SaudiMedLit is a database which provides access to references from medical journals published in Saudi Arabia. Many of the medical journals published in Saudi Arabia are not available for searching via the Internet and the ones which are now available must be searched individually. Medical libraries often receive requests from health professionals to search for medical topics related to Saudi Arabia. As far as we are aware, most of the medical information related to Saudi Arabia is published in Saudi Medical Journals. As there is no method of searching all these journals in one online database, the information services staff must search individual journals on the Internet and then search other journals manually, a very inefficient and time-consuming method of accessing information.

The Health Sciences Library of the King Salman Armed Forces Hospital in Northwestern Region (KSAFHNWR) has taken the challenges to remedy this longstanding deficiency by providing an alternate, efficient method of searching for citations to articles in medical journals published in Saudi Arabia .

Mr. Vipula Ranjith, Library Information Technologist / Library Incharge, has designed and developed a database-driven website and a user friendly search engine capable of Boolean searching. They are in the process of indexing articles, editorials, case reports, letters to the editor, etc. These are indexed by author, title, medical subject headings (MeSH), keywords, year, ISSN, etc., all into one database. When searching and utilizing any of the indexed criteria, or a combination of these, anyone searching for a topic will find citations to as many articles on the topic are available in any of these journals, all in one search and all in one database, without having to search in numerous sites or journals.

We believe that there is a need for such a database as much of the information in SaudiMedLit is only available in print format, so this would be the first database of its kind. We are confident that this service will serve a useful purpose for health care professionals, physicians, researchers, nurses, and allied health personnel, not only in Saudi Arabia but around the world.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank BRIG. GEN. DR. BANDAR ALI AL QAHTANIT, Director of KSAFHNWR, for his approval and support of this project.

My sincerest appreciation to Mr. Vipula Ranjith and the Library Staff for their vision, innovation and dedication to this project. They have identified a long standing problem and derived to an outstanding solution. They have initiated, designed, developed and contributed to a most valuable resource we hope you will find useful, our SaudiMedLit database.