Introduction to Medical Pharmacology:

Library & Information Resources

Pharmacology Resources

PubMed Medline and Other Electronic Indexes

Print Textbooks & Directories

Print texts and directories provide overviews of drug information including adverse effects, indications and usage, contraindications, mechanisms of action, pharmacological properties, precautions, information for patients, and more. Many texts also include extensive manufacturer indexes, brand and generic name indexes, product category indexes, and product identification tables.

Popular pharmacology texts include:

To locate pharmacology texts in the Alumni Medical Library, go to the QV, RM, and RS sections in the Reference or Reserve/Circulation Desk areas.

The current edition of Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics is on Reserve: QV 4 G6532 2006 and at Reference, and older copies are available in circulation. This text is also available electronically.

The PDR and The Physicians’ Desk Reference Supplement is shelved behind the Reference Desk at QV 772 P578. If a librarian is not at the desk, feel free to retrieve the book(s) yourself.

To find textbooks and directories in BU’s online library catalog, search by title, author, or the Medical subject Heading (MeSH). Try any of the following Medical subjects: “toxicology,” “pharmacology,” “pharmacy,” or “pharmaceutical services”. You can also find information by locating books on the disease or condition that the drug is used to treat.

Electronic Textbooks

The Alumni Medical Library has access to over 8,000 electronic textbooks, which are available via our web page at https://www.bumc.bu.edu/medlib/resources/e-books/. To access e-books on pharmacology, you can pull the subject from the drop-down box and click on “Search.” A list of titles will appear, and clicking on a title will bring you to that textbook. (You may also want to select “toxicology” for other texts.)

A number of our textbooks are in a collection called STAT!Ref, which allows users to search a number of textbooks simultaneously or an individual title separately. The program is available on the Web and can also be searched from computers in the Library or from remote locations to users who sign in to the Boston University campus network.

Some of the Pharmacology textbooks available online include:

AHFS Drug Information
Basic & Clinical Pharmacology
Drug Index
Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics
Pharmacology: Drug Actions and Reactions
Pharmacology in Drug Discovery
UptoDate

The Biomedical Journal Literature: PubMed

PubMed MEDLINE is the premier source for biomedical journal literature. PubMed includes over 20 million bibliographic citations and abstracts from approximately 5500 journals published worldwide. PubMed can be searched by author, title and abstract words (text words), journal name or MeSH (medical subject headings).