OLDMEDLINE was made available in December 1996, with over 300,000 citations published in the 1964 and 1965 Cumulated Index Medicus (CIM) (see NLM Technical Bulletin, 1996 Nov-Dec; (293):1,4-6). In completion of the next phase of NLM's goal to provide online access to citations published in Index Medicus before 1966, over 250,000 citations published in the 1962 and 1963 CIM will be added to OLDMED in Summer 1998.
Differences: The 1964 and 1965 CIM data were converted from the original data tapes largely "as is," meaning with minimal data cleanup and validation. Yet NLM was able to provide some data validation because the 1964 and 1965 data included Journal Title Codes (JC), which were used to link to SERLINE to provide current Title Abbreviation (TA), ISSN (IS), and Country (CY) data in matching citations in OLDMED. The 1962 and 1963 citations have been keyed from the printed indexes that did not include JC information. Title Abbreviations (TA) in 1962 and 1963 citations were not matched against current SERLINE information, and 1962-1963 citations do not contain any ISSN or CY data either.
Date of Publication (DP): The original DP format in OLDMEDLINE has been reformatted to display and search in the same way as DP in MEDLINE and MEDLINE Backfiles, e.g., DP -1962 May 14.
Year (YR) is directly searchable in either 2-or 4-digit format, e.g.,
(YR) 63
(YR) 1963
MeSH Headings, Subheadings and Keywords: As in 1964 and 1965 citations, the original MeSH Headings (MH) assigned to the 1962 and 1963 CIM citations are contained in the Keywords (KW) field. This is because these original Headings have not been maintained for over 30 years, and many are not current in 1998 MeSH. NLM has begun the task to map the original MeSH to current MeSH, and to add current MeSH Headings to OLDMED in the future.
Note that citations indexed for the 1963-1965 CIM were assigned MeSH Headings (MH) only, and did not include Subheadings (SH). Citations indexed for the 1962 CIM were indexed using Subheadings. These MH/SH combinations are contained in the Keywords (KW) field, but are not directly searchable using the MH/SH combinations. Only the MeSH Heading (MH) portion of the MH/SH combination may be searched directly, e.g. Heart/abnormalities may be searched directly as heart (KW)
Searchers may prefer to truncate the KW search term, e.g. Heart: (KW) or may use CONTAINS, e.g. HEART: (KW) contains abnormalities (KW)
Remember that not all Subheading values used in 1962 citations are Subheadings in 1998 MeSH.
As was announced when OLDMED first became available, these older data have been made available "as is." It is unlikely that NLM will have the resources to undertake any significant data error correction effort in the near future. Any errors reported by users will be kept on file, although the corrections cannot be made to the database now.
The Entry Month in OLDMED identifies the CIM in which the citation was printed:
EM -196512 = 1965 CIM
EM -196412 = 1964 CIM
EM -196312 = 1963 CIM
EM -196212 = 1962 CIM
Future Enhancements: Work has already begun to key the approximately 225,000 citations from the 1960 and 1961 CIM. NLM expects to add these citations to OLDMED in the fall of 1998. The OLDMEDLINE file is currently available for searching on Internet Grateful Med; the OLDMED citations are expected to be integrated in PubMed in the fall. Watch for the announcement for this.