Highlights of the September - October 2004 issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin

DOCLINE

Over 14.5 million requests by DOCLINE libraries and Loansome Doc users have been processed since DOCLINE came up on the Web on July 17, 2000. For the DOCLINE requests, the fill rate has been 91.45%. The average number of libraries to which a request routes before it is completed is 1.23. 83% of the requests are completed on the first route. 96% are completed after routing to two libraries. Currently, 3,093 libraries report owning 1,404,651 holdings. There are 53,706 unique serial titles for which holdings are reported. These numbers illustrate the strength of DOCLINE and the reciprocal interlibrary loan arrangements among DOCLINE libraries. Congratulations!
Deena Acton has contributed an excellent article to this issue about NLM's projects to provide batch updating of serials holdings between OCLC and DOCLINE. The article outlines in detail the process of updating serials holdings from DOCLINE to OCLC and from OCLC to DOCLINE. For each option she has included: method (how the updating is done), cost, schedule, authorization steps, preparation, data extraction details, error reports, and a guide to which libraries should not use the function. This article is a must-read for anyone considering batch uploading serials holdings information!

The Bookshelf is becoming more useful for clinicians. Six new Evidence Report Summaries from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have been added as well as five new Guides to Clinical Preventive Services, 3^rd ed. Recommendations.

You now have an alternative to searching LocatorPlus for information about NLM's collections. NLM has added a new Entrez database, the NLM Catalog. You can access this from the PubMed homepage or from the NLM web site. You can search the NLM Catalog just as you search PubMed Medline, then link through to LocatorPlus for holdings and item availability. LocatorPlus is more up-to-date than the NLM Catalog, but with the NLM Catalog you can 'explode' MeSH terms and use automatic term mapping. Read the article for even more information!
The NLM Gateway now uses the NLM Catalog for book information rather than LocatorPlus.
The NLM Catalog has also been added to the Entrez Global Query System.

Fans of C. Everett Koop will be pleased to know that his papers have been added to the NLM Profiles in Science web site. As Surgeon General of the United States from 1981 - 1989, Koop was concerned and active in issues involving major public concerns, including smoking, violence, and AIDS.
The papers of Wilber Augustus Sawyer have also been added to the NLM Profiles in Science web site. Sawyer was a key figure in preventive medicine and international public health during the first part of the twentieth century.

Libraries can now register their local document delivery system and their OpenURL-based server with NCBI to direct their users to these systems from PubMed. PubMed supports OpenURL-based services either through LinkOut or Outside Tool.
Year-end processing of MEDLINE/PubMed will begin on November 17, 2004. During this time, NLM will halt temporarily the addition of new, fully-indexed MEDLINE citations. In-process citations will continue to be added. Sometime in December, PubMed will be updated with the 2005 MeSH, and indexing will resume.
Over 140,000 Supplementary Concept Records will be added to the Entrez MeSH database. The MeSH database will then include the full MeSH vocabulary.
Old MEDLINE continues to grow and now total 1,760,578 citations back to 1950.
NLM has generated a series of statistical reports run on baseline MEDLINE/PubMed data. The reports are available as both PDF and Microsoft Excel files and the overall report on the 2004 baseline is also available in HTML format. NLM expects to make similar reports available after the conclusion of each production year. These reports should be useful to researchers mining NLM data among others interested in MEDLINE. Take a look at some of the data here.
The LinkOut display has been enhanced and is now easier to read. Take a look by clicking on Links on the right side of the PubMed screen.

Journal of Insect Science is included in PubMed Central, starting with February 2001.