Of recent interest to medical librarians is an article that was published in BMJ regarding search results in PubMed and how evidence from randomized clinical trials is retrieved. Here is some updated information from the National Library of Medicine, Bibliographic Services Division:

Re: Wieland LS, Robinson KA, Dickersin K. Understanding why evidence from randomised clinical trials may not be retrieved from Medline: comparison of
indexed and non-indexed records. BMJ. 2012 Jan 3;344:d7501. doi: 10.1136/bmj.d7501. PubMed PMID: 22214757.

Readers of this article should recognize that the authors assumed no changes took place in the NLM indexing of Randomized Controlled Trial
[publication type]. In fact, NLM has made changes since 2005 that we think affect the conclusions and projections made in the article. These changes
are: (more…)

The National Library of Medicine Training Center (NTC) will be creating
web based self-paced tutorials related to PubMed®, TOXNET®, and NCBI databases.

We need your input in order to inform topics, length, and format of the
tutorials we will develop. Please visit
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ntctutorial to complete a short
questionnaire. The questionnaire should take 10-15 minutes to complete.

To say thank you for your time, we will give a $10 Amazon.com gift
certificate to the first 50 people who complete the questionnaire.

Please complete the questionnaire by close of business on Friday,
February 17, 2012.

What is fracking? What are uranium tailings and how can they affect my health?  Answers to these questions can be found in Town’s new US Southwest Scene:

http://www.toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/flash/southwest/flash.php (English)
http://www.toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/flash/southwest/flash_sp.php (Spanish) (more…)

Subscribing to the NLM Technical Bulletin is an excellent way to keep up-to-date on changes to the National Library of Medicine systems, such as PubMed, MeSH, MyNCBI, LocatorPlus, and PubMed Health.

In PubMed the week, the Advanced Search page was updated. Terms entered in the Search Builder will automatically populate the search box, and MeSH term searching has been enhanced to include an autocomplete feature. See the full article for more details.

Another recent article announces new features for PubMed Health, NLM’s clinical effectiveness database. Change include enhanced information from the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query database, two new full-text books about understanding heathcare decisions and treatments, and an improved display of medical encyclopedia search results. With the inclusion of the Database of Reviews of Effects (DARE) from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination in England, PubMed Health is getting close to comprehensive coverage of reliable systematic reviews on clinical effectiveness.

Read the article here, and stay current with  email updates or an RSS feed.

The following news is from Sharon Dennis, Assistant Director of the NN/LM National Library of Medicine Training Center (NTC), located at the University of Utah, which offers in-person and online training related to NLM products.

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The National Library of Medicine’s software development challenge Show off Your Apps: Innovative Uses of NLM Information solicited applications that used the library’s data to develop innovative ways for people to obtain and share scientific and medical information. Entrants could create a new app, or submit an existing one. (more…)