The Cochrane Library of systematic reviews is published quarterly. Issue 3 for 2003 of the library was published in May 2003. That issue contains 3058 reviews of which 1754 are in full text. The issue contains 85 new reviews and four of those are directly relevant to pain management and palliative care. Annotated bibliographies for those seven reviews are provided. Issue 4 for 2003 of The Cochrane reviews and 1344 protocols. The Cochrane trials database now stands at over at over 378,000 records with an additional 4626 summaries of non-Cochrane systematic reviews published in the general medical literature [(Database of abstracts of reviews of effectiveness (DARE)].