Inside PUBMED: Limiting A Search To Local Holding
While librarians and information specialists may spend many hours debating the wisdom of limiting search results to local holdings, there are times when it is useful to be able to do so. Is there an easy way in PubMed to limit results to local holdings only? Depending on the library situation, this may be easy or difficult. If the library participates in LinkOut, the process is fairly easy. If the library is not currently participating, depending on the size of the serials collection, the process may range from fairly easy to nigh impossible.
** A word of caution, as always: If the library has only its electronic journal collection linked, then this method of limiting should restrict retrieval to only those records for which there is electronic full text access available through the institution. However, if the library has also linked its Serhold records, this method will pull up all linked records -- both the records for which electronic full text access is available and those records for which only holdings information is available. Therefore, it is important that the people using this limiting method understand what sorts of records will be retrieved.
LinkOut Libraries
As a LinkOut participating library, there are two ways to limit results to local holdings. Both use the name abbreviation designating this particular library in LinkOut. If you don't know your library's name abbreviation, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/journals/active_libraries.html. Libraries are grouped first by region and then alphabetically within the region. So, for example, U Mass Med is listed toward the bottom of the section titled "New England Region" and the appropriate library abbreviation is "umasslib".
(1) The easiest way to limit to local holdings is to add the following to your search:
AND loprov - - - - - [filter]
- Where:
- "AND" is, of course, the Boolean connector - capitalized as required by PubMed
- "loprov" indicates LinkOut provider
- "- - - - " is the name abbreviation designating this particular library in LinkOut
- "[filter]" is the tag applied to the search
Or, if the "AND" is omitted, this may be run as a stand-alone search and then combined with another search using the History function.
So, to limit a search to U Mass Med's Lamar Soutter Library holdings, here is how the string would look:
AND loprovumasslib[filter]
Or, to limit to the holdings of, say, the New England College of Optometry, the search string would be:
AND loprovnecolib[filter]
This search strategy may be saved in the Cubby (omitting the "AND") and used at will. You may decide to post it on the library web site for users. Then again, you may decide to keep this a trade secret. It's up to you.
(2) The other way to do this is to use the "Preview/Index" page in PubMed. Click on the drop-down menu next to the words "All Fields" and highlight the word "filter." In the adjacent textbox, type in "loprov" and the first couple letters of the library's abbreviation. Click on the "Index" button and select the appropriate library from the list that appears. Highlight it. Click on "AND" to add it to your search. Run the search. Again, this search strategy may be saved in the Cubby.
Non-LinkOut Libraries
While it sure would be lovely to say there is an easy way to do this in PubMed if the library is not participating in LinkOut, that's just not the case. The only way to limit a search to local holdings is to create a PubMed search listing all the journal titles in the collection. If the collection is small, this is doable. If the collection is large, the process is cumbersome and time-consuming and, even though it would only have to be done once, the number of titles may make it an impossible task.
However, if a library would like to attempt this, the process involves creating a search connecting all the journal titles with "OR." This could be done using a word processor and then copied into the Details box in PubMed. Or, the search could be written right in the details box. For example, the search would look something like this:
"Am J Art Ther"[journal] OR "JAMA"[journal] OR "Br Dent J"[journal] OR "heart lung"[journal]…etc
or, since in PubMed "[journal]" equals "[TA]" , the search could be written as:
"Am J Art Ther"[TA] OR "JAMA"[TA] OR "Br Dent J"[TA] OR "heart lung"[TA]…etc
Obviously, this will take time. The nice thing, however, is that once the search is written correctly, it can be saved in the Cubby, too.
For All Libraries
Once a search has been saved in the Cubby, if it is accessed and run, it will appear in the History section of PubMed until there has been one hour of inactivity on that particular computer. Once in the History, it can be combined with other searches (ex: #1 AND #3).
Donna Berryman, Outreach Coordinator
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