 Pubmed Particulars
OLDMEDLINE Citations
Taken from the NLM Technical Bulletin
See for the entire article.
On September 30, 2003, over 1.5 million OLDMEDLINE citations were added to PubMed. These citations were originally printed in hardcopy indexes published from 1953 through 1965.
The data in the OLDMEDLINE records differ from that in the current PubMed records in several important ways:
- Abstracts: OLDMEDLINE citations have no abstracts.
- Publication Type: Only "Journal Article" was used.
- Language: Some citations will indicate "und" because the actual foreign language was not specified and is, therefore, undetermined.
- Article titles: Some are all in caps; over 28,000 citations show "Not Available" as the title because they lack English translations of the titles.
- Other Term: This field contains the original MeSH terms assigned at the time the records were first established. There are no data in the MeSH Heading [MH] field. As a result, the subject headings on OLDMEDLINE
citations do not relate to current MeSH Tree numbers, and the MeSH
"explode" capability that collects indented terms is not functional for
these data. There are no check tags.
Considerations for PubMed searching of OLDMEDLINE citations:
New Status Tag: The [PubMed - OLDMEDLINE for Pre1966] tag identifies these citations.
New Subset: Searches can be limited to OLDMEDLINE using a new subset created for these citations. You may select, OLDMEDLINE for Pre1966, from the Subsets menu in Limits. Alternatively, this subset can be used directly in a search as oldmedline [sb].
Other Term field: The Other Term field in PubMed contains non-MeSH subject terms. In the case of OLDMEDLINE citations, this field contains the original index terms. These terms are not updated. These terms are all preceded by an asterisk to indicate a major concept. (Asterisks are for display only. You cannot search Other Terms with a major concept tag.) The OT field is searchable with the Text Word [TW] and Other Term [OT] search tags.
Entrez Date: The Entrez date for OLDMEDLINE citations is created using the date of publication on the citation. This is necessary to prevent older citations from displaying near the top of retrieval as the default display order in PubMed is reverse chronological order of the Entrez date (i.e., last in - first out). This also means these citations will not be included in Cubby update retrieval.
Journal Title Abbreviations: Journal title abbreviations may have been changed from the abbreviation found on the original OLDMEDLINE citation; however, using an old abbreviation will retrieve across all years. NLM's catalog, LOCATORplus will have old title abbreviation data on serial records for OLDMEDLINE journals. As always, full title names can be used for searching in PubMed.
Personal Name as subject [PS]: Many OLDMEDLINE citations reference articles about historical figures. If you want to search for an atypical name, use the following examples as a guide:
james i of england [ps]
louis xiv [ps]
st paul [ps]
More typical names can be searched as in this example:
von gudden b [ps]
Searching considerations (no abstracts, no MeSH):
- OLDMEDLINE citations do not have fields frequently found on MEDLINE records,
including: Abstract, Affiliation, EC/RN Number and Name of Substances [RN],
Grant Numbers [GR], and MeSH Terms [MH]. In addition to not having abstracts or
MeSH terms, approximately two percent of OLDMEDLINE citations do not have a title.
These factors reduce the number of access points for searchers.
- Also, keep in mind when searching that "limits" that utilize MeSH terms, e.g.,
age groups, human, etc., will exclude OLDMEDLINE citations. No MeSH also means no
capability to explode broad terms to retrieve specific terms. When doing subject
searches to include OLDMEDLINE citations consider including variations in vocabulary
(e.g., kidney OR kidneys). NLM is investigating whether it will be possible to convert
the old index terms to current MeSH vocabulary (as a long term project).
Donna Berryman, Outreach Coordinator
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