In this issue:

The Director's Report: Computer Education Ctr and Renovation Update

PDA Support

New Proxy Service -
EZ Proxy

Library Classes on Demand

Pubmed Update

Open Access Update and UCONN's BiomedCentral Membership

Web Watcher:
Medical Entomology and Parasitology

New Drug Database: Epocrates Rx Online

Journal Cancellations for 2004

New Books in the Library

Books in Print Online and
Ulrich's Periodical's Directory Online

Update Archives

PubMed Milestone - 15 Millionth Journal Citation

On August 11, PubMed attained a major milestone when the 15 millionth journal citation was added to the database. The citation is:

Zheng Y, Zhou ZM, Yin LL, Li JM, Sha JH.
Molecular cloning and characterization of a novel splicing variant of PIASx.
Acta Pharmacol Sin. 2004 Aug;25(8):1058-64.
PMID: 15301740 [PubMed - in process]

From the NLM Technical Bulletin, Jul-Aug 2004, Technical Notes: PubMed Milestone - 15 Millionth Journal Citation at:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ja04/ja04_technote.html#milestone

Preview/Index

The Preview/Index search feature provides a variety of options for constructing a search strategy easily.

If you do not use Preview/Index when you search PubMed, the search will be run for you in the following manner. PubMed has an automatic term mapping feature that compares the term(s) entered in the query box with terms in the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) index, the journal titles index and the author index, in that order. Any terms that are not found are then searched again as individual terms following the mapping procedure, and if still not found in those indexes in this manner, they are then searched in All Fields. If no Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT, caps are required) is specified the default is AND.

The Preview/Index search feature can be used to:

· preview the number of search results
· specify the search field(s)
· create a search strategy composed of multiple terms and/or fields
· select terms and fields using the index

Preview the number of search results

To preview the number of search results enter your search term(s) in either the query box or the text box and click on the ‘Preview’ button next to the box you used. The number of search results will be displayed in the list of most recent queries, and the number in the ‘Results’ column is a link to the results if you want to go on to view them. If you click on ‘Go’ instead of ‘Preview’ you will be taken directly to the search results instead of staying in Preview/Index.

Specify the search field(s)

To select the field in which to search use the ‘All Fields’ pull-down menu and highlight the field. Type your search term in the text box adjacent to it and click on preview to display your results in the list of most recent queries.

For example, if you wanted to search for the journal named Pain you would select the journal field from the field pull-down menu, type pain in the text box, and then click on preview. This limits your retrieval to only citations for articles published in the journal named Pain.

To find citations to articles authored by CG Pick, select author from the field pull-down menu, type Pick CG in the text box, and click on preview.

Create a search composed of multiple terms or fields

Preview/Index can be used to easily construct a search strategy composed of multiple terms from the same field or from different fields.

If you wanted to retrieve citations to articles authored by CG Pick that were published in the journal named Pain, you would first do the journal search but this time do not clear the query box. Then do the author search and when you click on preview the author search will be ANDed with the journal search in the query bar:

pain[Journal] AND pick cg[Author]

To get your final results click on either Preview or Go.

Use Index to select search terms and fields

As we saw in the first search example, retrieval on the search term ‘asthma’ is very large and you would want to narrow your results by focusing or refining your search strategy. You could accomplish this in a number of ways, for example by adding additional terms/concepts to the search strategy, by limiting the field being searched, by limiting to some specific aspect of asthma, or by using some of the features of ‘Limits’ such as limiting the range of publication dates, to English language articles, or to human.

There are some features of Index that might be very useful for this purpose.For example, you could take advantage of medical subject headings (MeSH) and subheadings to focus your retrieval.

If you really want to find citations to articles specifically about chemically induced asthma rather than all articles that discuss asthma you could use the MeSH/subheading combination of asthma/chemically induced. To do this use the pull-down menu to specify the search field MeSH terms, type asthma in the adjacent text box and click on Index, this opens the index of terms to the MeSH term asthma followed by a list of asthma/subheading combinations. After selecting your search term

"asthma/chemically induced"[MeSH Terms]

you can either preview your results or you can select from the Boolean operator buttons (AND, OR, NOT) to add the term to the query box to be searched singly or in combination with other terms.

This method can be used to construct search strategies of one or multiple terms.

"asthma/chemically induced"[MeSH Terms] OR "asthma/congenital"[MeSH Terms] OR "asthma/genetics"[MeSH Terms]

Hint: hold down the Control key to select multiple terms from the index.

The most recent issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin, Jul-Aug 2004, is now available:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/current_issue.html. It includes: an article about PubMed Central® concerning the addition of new journals and more articles, an article about the Household Products Database® (HPD) that contains information about the health effects and safety of the chemical ingredients of common household products, plus other items of interest.