Highlights of the November - December 2003 issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin

One of the most exciting news items is the announcement that the Journal of the Medical Library Association and its predecessor, the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, are now completely available full-text. This includes Alison Bunting's important historical article, "The Nation's Health Information Network: History of the Regional Medical Library Program, 1965-1985" published as a supplement to the July 1987 issue of BMLA. If you haven't taken a close look at PubMed Central, a bit of exploring might be fun to do! Alison's history is available through this link. If you would prefer something shorter than this 62 page article, take a look at the following article authored in part by our own Joan Zenan, from Savitt Medical Library at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Zenan, Joan et al: Public Health Outreach Forum: report. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 2001 Oct;89(4):400-3. click here

Or, take a look at the very first issue, published in 1911:

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/tocrender.fcgi?iid=7245

What's new in PubMed and MEDLINE?

• PubMed is now updated with the 2004 MeSH. MEDLINE citations now include the new headings. Be sure to update your Cubby searches with the new terms.
• There is a new status in PubMed - "in data review". This is used when the issue level bibliographic data has been verified and it is being reviewed for article specific information, e.g., authors, article title, and abstract. When this information has been reviewed, the status will change to "in process".
• Another article to read if you do a lot of drug searching is Pharmacological Action Terms Identified in MeSH Database.
• PubMed users can now access information from the over 3,000 chemical substances in the Hazardous Substances Data Bank. Click on 'Links' to the right of each citation, then click on 'LinkOut'. Look for Hazardous Substances Data Bank.

What's new with MeSH?

• Can you believe there is now a MeSH heading for MALNUTRITION? Seems like it should have been there long ago! Thank heavens for PubMed's mapping capability!
• The MeSH heading 'case report' has been deleted and replaced by a new Publication Type 'case reports'.
• The /toxicity subheading may now be used with both experimental and environmental exposure. Previously, it was only used for experimental studies.
• MeSH has been expanded from nine to eleven levels. Because of this there is now more room for animal terms. The check tag ANIMAL is being changed to a new descriptor ANIMALS. The old descriptor ANIMALS is being changed to ANIMAL POPULATION GROUPS. INVERTEBRATES and VERTEBRATES are now treed under ANIMALS. ALGAE AND FUNGI are now separated into ALGAE and FUNGI. There are now 310 new descriptors in BACTERIA that reflect taxonomic changes in Bergey's Manual.
• Many new terms have been added to SUBSTANCES, Category D. Another change is that ANTIBIOTICS has a new preferred MeSH heading, ANTI-BACTERIAL AGENTS. If you regularly search for chemical terms, be sure to read Heading Mapped-to Maintenance: for Supplementary Concept Records' Names of Substance.
• The MeSH descriptor RACIAL STOCKS and its four children, AUSTRALOID RACE, CAUCASOID RACE, MONGOLOID RACE, and NEGROID RACE have been deleted, along with BLACKS and WHITES. Instead, we now have terms for various Continental Population Groups - including AFRICAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP, AMERICAN NATIVE CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP, ASIAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP, and OCEANIC ANCESTRY GROUP. ABORIGINES has been replaced by OCEANIC ANCESTRY GROUP. ESKIMOS has been replaced by INUITS in the AMERICAN NATIVE CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP.

If you consider yourself an 'expert searcher', be sure to read this issue of the Technical Bulletin thoroughly! For more information about specific MeSH terms, go to the MeSH home page at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html. The MeSH Browser will provide more information about terms than you will find in the MeSH Database in PubMed. You will find a link to the MeSH Browser when you look at a record in PubMed's MeSH Database.

Other News

• There are several new features in MedlinePlus. There are more "Easy-to-Read" pages, and there is a new Organizations page that lists all organizations included in MedlinePlus. You can now also sign up for weekly health news articles and links on selected topics.
• MedlinePlus en Español now offers drug information in Spanish and a daily news feed of Spanish language health and wellness articles.
• Libraries that do not have serials holdings data in DOCLINE can now upload a text file of their holdings to display their print holdings through PubMed's LinkOut feature.
• DOCLINE now provides links to free full-text articles whenever the article is available at either PubMed Central or at the producer's site. Please note that if you continue to process your DOCLINE request, NLM will charge you for the loan even though the article is available free online. NLM has placed this notice in DOCLINE so that you may more quickly get a copy of the article for your requester and so that you may stop the request.

Educational and Training Opportunities

• The UMLS Basics course will be offered at NLM on February 23, 2004. Attendees will receive 7.5 MLA continuing education credits for this course.

Julie Kwan

[Editor's note: Wherever possible in this article, we have used text directly from the NLM Technical Bulletin for clarity and correctness.]

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