In this issue:

The Director's Report

PDAs for the Class of 2006

We're on the Move! Services during the Renovation.

New Links on the
Library Homepage

Pubmed Update

A UCHC Library Weblog

Web Watcher: Science-
Technology-Medicine Gateways

Library Classes: You Ask, We Deliver!

FDA launches Drugs@FDA
Website

New Books in the Library

Pictures from the Library
Renovation

Update Archives

Enhancements to Entre Software

Changes have been made in the programming software used to run searches in PubMed that will make searching easier and results more consistent. Here are some of the improvements and sample queries:

· A colon can be used between numbers to indicate a range of publication years following the format 2002:2004 [dp]. The use of a colon in any other situation will be ignored. It is still possible to limit to a range of publication years via the Limits page.

asthma 2002:2004 [dp]

asthma bronchitis 2002:2004 [dp]

· If nested terms are combined with other terms in your search query and you omit the Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT), the PubMed default is AND.

fungi (asthma OR bronchitis)

will be searched as fungi AND (asthma OR bronchitis)

· When you are searching for a phrase you indicate it by hyphenating the terms, for example, single-cell. The index of searchable terms is then searched for the phrase, and now if the phrase is not found, PubMed will now run the search by ANDing the terms together.

single-cell is found as a phrase and the search is carried out as single-cell[All Fields]

healthy-full-term is not found as a phrase so it will be searched as healthy[All Fields] AND full[All Fields] AND term[All Fields]

Clinical Queries and the MeSH Database Are Now Linked

It is now possible to search the MeSH (medical subject headings) database for the appropriate medical subject heading to use for your search concept and then transfer the medical subject heading you select to the Clinical Queries page using Links.

For example, go to the MeSH database and search for latex allegies. Choose the MeSH term, click on the Links menu and select Clinical Queries.

The medical subject heading that you selected will be inserted into the query box on the Clinical Queries page. Select whether you want to search Clinical Queries or Systematic Reviews, and continue your search.

The reason that you might want to search using MeSH is because MeSH is the National Library of Medicine’s controlled vocabulary. MeSH is used to index articles in PubMed and it describes the contents of articles. You can search MEDLINE or Clinical Queries using textwords, but if you do remember to consider the synonyms you may need to include in order to create a comprehensive concept for use in your search strategy.

History Feature

Exciting new options will be available soon in the History feature, including the ability to delete individual search statements from History and combine search statements more easily. More information about these new options is available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ma04/ma04_history.html.

Additional information regarding PubMed enhancements and other topics can be found in the NLM Technical Bulletin located at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/tb.html.