Highlights of the September - October 2003 issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin
Consult the NLM Technical Bulletin for more details on the following:
What's new in PubMed and MEDLINE?
- Over 1.5 million citations to articles published between 1953 and 1965 have been added to PubMed and removed from the Gateway. These records were produced with different data entry standards than are now used for MEDLINE records. Consequently, you may need to use different search techniques to retrieve these citations. See the complete article for detailed instructions.
- PubMed now includes three short animations to help users learn how to use Cubby. The three presentations are: 1) Getting Started with Cubby, 2) Storing a Search Strategy in Cubby, and 3) Checking What's New for a Cubby Stored Search. You will find these in the Cubby section of PubMed's Help. more
- On November 13, 2003, NLM began MEDLINE/PubMed end-of-year activities and temporarily interrupted adding newly indexed citations to MEDLINE and PubMed until these end-of-year activities are complete. These activities include a variety of global changes, most notably changing MeSH headings on existing MEDLINE citations to conform to the new 2004 version of MeSH. In-process citations will continue to be added, but there will be a longer time during which these citations do not have MeSH headings. Remember that search strategies that use MeSH terms will not retrieve in-process citations or publisher-supplied citations. more
- Do you have projects that use the MEDLINE UI (Unique Identifier)? Last month's Technical Bulletin announced that the UI would be discontinued. You can now go to a MEDLINE UI/PubMed ID matcher in order to find the corresponding PubMed ID (PMID).This is available on the PubMed sidebar under E-Utilities. more info
Vocabulary - MeSH and UMLS
- Wordsmiths will enjoy the discussion about the MeSH changes to the Category B Organism Tree and the check tag 'animal'. The impact on PubMed will in fact be quite small because most changes will be automatically mapped. However, the changes are a vast improvement in how knowledge is represented in the tree structures. PubMed users who have stored Cubby searches containing the descriptor 'Animals' or the check tag 'Animal' should review the content of this article as should anyone who regularly searches for articles on animals.
- The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) was updated during the summer and can now be searched online. You must be a registered user of the UMLS Knowledge Source Server in order to search the database. More details about the UMLS are available on its web site.
- The MeSH Browser now has a link to the 2004 MeSH. You can also download the 2004 MeSH in both XML and ASCII formats. Both are available on the MeSH Home Page.
Educational and Training Opportunities
- The National Training Center and Clearinghouse has announced its schedule of classes for 2004. Classes in our region have been added to the Upcoming Events in this issue of Latitudes. For the complete listing, see the NTCC training schedule.
- Do you need a brush-up on molecular biology and genetics? This issue of the Technical Bulletin includes an article with a useful chart of molecular biology and genetics information resources and training opportunities.
- NCBI is offering four regional sessions of the three-day Introduction to Molecular Biology Information Resources class this year. If you missed the Los Angeles class on November 17 - 19, 2003, you may wish to consider the upcoming class in Seattle, Washington on June 14 - 16, 2004. Other dates are available on the upcoming course schedule.
- You can now find PDF versions of the training slides for the UMLS Basics class. The next class will be offered at NLM on February 23, 2004; the class will also be offered at the Medical Library Association meeting in May 2004. more
- There is a new PubMed tutorial available from the PubMed sidebar. This new tutorial includes changes to PubMed through June 2003, including: page selection, "send to" pull-down menu options, journals database, MeSH database, abstract/full-text icons, display of more comments/corrections, and new search capabilities for corporate author, place of publication, and grant number. more
Entrez Global Search
- As NLM's databases continue to grow, there is more interest in being able to search across all databases at one time. Entrez now has a Global Query System in which you can enter a query and see the number of hits in each Entrez database. Click on Entrez on the black menu bar in PubMed or go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery/gquery.fcgi.
NIHSeniorHealth Web Site
- The NIHSeniorHealth Web Site was officially announced on October 23, 2003. Developed by both the National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine, NIHSeniorHealth is specifically tailored for use by older adults and the individuals who care for them. The site has been designed to incorporate special features to increase readability for older readers, including larger type and short, easy-to-read segments of information. You can click a "Turn on Speech" button to hear the text. You can access NIHSeniorHealth at http://nihseniorhealth.gov/.
[Editor's note: Wherever possible in this article, we have used text directly from the NLM Technical Bulletin for clarity and correctness.]