Ok I know Ovid has been my "list" lately. I actually really like Ovid as a product for searching Medline. I honestly think the way they have it set up so that users are guided/forced into using the MeSH terms is better than how PubMed (more or less) hides their MeSH searching abilities.
However, most end users have NO CLUE as to what MeSH is and why they should use it when searching Medline. We do our best as librarians to educate, but you can reach everybody. Therefore a many users look at Ovid and then look at PubMed and decide on using PubMed. To them PubMed looks like a glorified Google (shudder....). But there are other cool things that PubMed does that Ovid hasn't done or done well that is really creating a great divide between the two.

Related Articles Link:
Ok say what you want as a librarian about the Related Articles link. But who hasn't run a really cool and perfect search Pub Med that yields 3 citations. You click on that little link to see what other stuff "pops up" if it is good then you look at the indexing to see what other terms that you are missing or other ways you should express and form your search question. Ovid has no such thing. You have to look at the indexing of the citation you already retrieved and try and expand from there. What good is it to look at something you already retrieved to find something you think is missing?

LinkOut:
I realize Ovid has Links@Ovid and LinkSolver, but really those are overkill. Ovid has yet to match the simplicity and ease of LinkOut in PubMed. I am sorry but when takes me, the Systems Librarian, and Ovid help desk months to try and figure out how to get Links@Ovid working correctly with our OhioLINK consortia journals and STILL NOT COME UP WITH A VIABLE SOLUTION, then you really have a cumbersome unfriendly product. All we wanted it to say include OhioLINK journals, check a box and then the electronic journal collection would be available full text through Ovid. It would be updated and I wouldn't have to touch it ever again (just like PubMed). But nooo it wasn't going to work like that. Additionally, it was a serious pain in the butt to add journals to Links@Ovid. If it wasn't in their preset list of journals then you had to create or provide the dynamic html for the journal. Huh, I don't have the time to do that for every journal that is not on their "list."
I realize PubMed's LinkOut is far from perfect, but the beauty of it is in its ease of use and overall simplicity. Ovid has yet to create something so easy and simple. They try and make their two linking products do more than the average library needs. Why can't they have something as simple and as easy as PubMed's LinkOut and then create the whole kit and kaboodle with their pay product LinkSolver.

Interesting note: When I was struggling to make Links@Ovid work for our library I asked many questions to one of the people in charge of the product. One of the questions was about why does PubMed's product does X and Ovid's can't do X. The response I got was, "I haven't ever looked at PubMed's LinkOut so I don't know why." You would think they would look at the major competition when building their products...HELLO!!!!

Email:
Yes, yes I know both products allow you to email searches. However, only PubMed allows you to email in HTML. Now I am a big fan of text email. I am tired of getting all off those busy spam page emails. But, the nice thing about PubMed's ability to email in HTML is that all of the full text links to the emailed citations are active. So you can email a search to a doctor and he can click on the link of the article he wants and get the full text of the article. He doesn't have to email you again and ask you to copy the article and he doesn't have to do a search in your journal holdings to get the article. Full text access is right at his emailed finger tips. Ovid only allows you to email text. So they have no direct one stop access to the full text of the article. The doctor now either has to take the time to search our holdings or (more likely) call us to get the article.


Listening to other librarians and lurking on email lists, I have heard many librarians saying they are dumping Ovid because they can no longer justify the cost when PubMed does so many other things. Hmm it appears to me that Ovid better start looking at PubMed as competition and focusing on improving their product.