Links: Bye-bye Books

On February 6, 2007, the Books option was removed from the Links menu in PubMed. Are you saying, "What? What do you mean?" And are you thinking: "There was a books option in the Links menu in PubMed? Wait a minute - what's the Links menu?"

Here's where to find the Links:

Clicking on Links will bring up a menu with various options depending on the subjects covered in the selected citation:

Links is an attempt to get users beyond the PubMed citation and into additional information available outside of PubMed in other NCBI Entrez resources and beyond (via the LinkOut option). That's why it exists.

There used to be a "Books" option in Links. Choosing the Books option would display the Abstract Format for that citation with many, many hyperlinks in the abstract and title field. Following any of those hyperlinks would produce a list of books from PubMed's Bookshelf that had content pertinent to the chosen link. It was, at times, very frustrating to use. And now it has been removed.

Don't despair. The good folks at NCBI are working on finding a better way to link the concepts discussed in a PubMed citation to relevant content in Bookshelf books. When they figure out how to do that, the Books link (or something similar) will reappear.

In the meantime, it may be useful to know that there are a couple of Links options that will point users to other bibliographic materials: Cited in PMC and Cited in Books.

Cited in PMC will alert users to the fact that this article was cited by an author of another PubMed Central article. Clicking on the link will display the following:

The Cited in Books link will connect users to the book (or books) that cite the article:

Following the hyperlink that appears in the Bookshelf will take the user to the exact portion of text of the book where the reference of interest appears.

The Cited in PMC and Cited in Books options pertain only to articles in PubMed Central and books available via the Bookshelf. At this point in time, this may not seem like such a big deal. However, as the amount of content in PMC grows and as the number of books available increases, these two options could become incredibly rich research tools.

As is NCBI's custom, there is more than one way to find Cited in PMC and Cited in Books (along with the other Links options). The Display options in PubMed are one other way:

This functions a little bit differently from the citation level Links option. Using the Display function will show all the citations from your search result set that have, for example, the Cited in PMC link. Just click on the option wanted and PubMed will display the items from your result set that have the selected criteria.

But wait! There's more. Most of these Links options are also available as filters in My NCBI.

If you are interested in the Bookshelf and would like to be notified when new books are added, subscribe to the Books-Announce list. Find that information http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mailman/listinfo/books-announce

From the NLM Technical Bulletin

PubMed training materials have been updated to reflect changes made to the database through December 2006. Items updated are:

• PubMed Tutorial
  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pubmed_tutorial/m1001.html
• Branching Out: The MeSH Vocabulary (video)
  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/video/
• PubMed Training Workbook
  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/web_based.html
• Link to the Technical Bulletin article:
  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/jf07/jf07_technote.html#1

There's a new web page for journals chosen for indexing in MEDLINE. See http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/lstrc/new_titles.html for the list of titles chosen after the 2006 meetings of the Literature Section Technical Review Committee (LSTRC). The web page contains the full title, title abbreviation, first issue to be indexed, ISSN, and language of the journal. There is also a link from each title to the NLM Catalog record for additional information. Be aware that some e-only journals are in a pending status due to some technical issues (NLM approval of their XML data) and confirmation that the publisher has a permanent archive arrangement.

Link to the Technical Bulletin article:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/jf07/jf07_technote.html#5

Perhaps you didn't hear the great rejoicing throughout the land when NLM announced that the MeSH Subheadings will not be consolidated. If not, you may wish to read the Technical Note concerning: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/jf07/jf07_technote.html#2

Health Literacy subject page has been added. Access it by clicking on "Health Literacy" in the Special Queries page in PubMed. The subject page not only explains the search strategy used on the Special Queries page but provides links to information about health literacy. The subject page is located at
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/health_literacy.html

Link to the Technical Bulletin article:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd06/nd06_technote.html#12

A consolidated Bioethics Information Resources web page has had its debut. Read the announcement at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/bioethics.html and explore the web page at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/bioethics.html.

Donna Berryman, Outreach Coordinator
Donna.Berryman@umassmed.edu