NLM’s ALTBIB portal has been updated. ALTBIB provides access to PubMed/MEDLINE citations relevant to alternatives to the use of live vertebrates in biomedical research and testing. Many of the citations provide access to free full text of the article. The site’s topics and subtopics are aligned with current approaches. For example, information is provided on in silico, in vitro, and improved (refined) animal testing methods. Strategies which incorporate validated methods and other approaches are also covered.

ALTBIB also provides access to animal alternatives news sources, such as the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM). The portal has an extensive collection of links to key organizations providing information on alternatives to animal testing. ALTBIB provides access to ICCVAM’s “International Acceptance of Alternative Methods, 1998-2012” and “U.S. and International Milestones in Alternative Test Method Development and Evaluations.”

In addition to the topic area PubMed searches, the ALTBIB portal includes a searchable bibliographic collection on alternatives to animal testing. This collection provides citations from published articles, books, book chapters, and technical reports published from 1980 to 2000. The bibliography features citations concerning methods, tests, assays, and procedures that may prove useful in establishing alternatives to the use of intact vertebrates. The ALTBIB bibliographic collection has not been updated since 2001, when the preformulated searches of PubMed were substituted for collecting a formal bibliography.

PubMed for Handhelds (PubMed4Hh) app is now available for free in the iTunes store.

This is an alternative to saving the PubMed for Handhelds web site as a mobile site. Remember to check out the NLM Gallery of Mobile Apps and Sites to see what’s newly listed!

The European Research Council (ERC) announced today that it will participate in the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) open access repository service, joining 18 existing UK and European funders. The ERC becomes the third European funder to join UKPMC, following Telethon Italy and the Austrian Research Fund.

As a result of this participation, the existing funders have agreed that the service will be rebranded as ‘Europe PubMed Central’ (Europe PMC) by November 1, 2012. A key aim of this initiative is to extend the repository further and encourage other European funders of life sciences research to make the outputs of the research they fund freely available through Europe PMC.

For more information see the announcement from the Wellcome Trust. NLM’s PMC team deserves a lot of credit for UKPMC to expand like this. It speaks to both the quality of the underlying software and the manner in which PMC has worked with the partner sites to ensure their integrity.

The My Bibliography Award View display, a tool developed by NCBI to assist eRA Commons users to comply with the NIH Public Access policy and associate their publications to NIH awards, will be enhanced in the following three ways:

• eRA Commons account holders will be able to associate any grant with citations in their My Bibliography collection, and they will be able to search for awards with the assistance of auto-complete;
• eRA users’ My Bibliography collection will be automatically updated to include citations that have been associated to the grants awarded to them;
• New filter options will be added for paper-grant associations.

Complete details, with associated screen shots, are published in the NLM Technical Bulletin.

PubMed “Results by year” and PubMed Central “PMC images search” tools now display in the discovery column for all PubMed users.

The “Results by year” timeline tool displays with search results of 10,000 or more citations. Mousing over the bars in the timeline will show the number of citations for each year. Click the right and left arrows to display older or newer years, and click the individual bars in the timeline to display the results for a single year.

The “PMC images search” tool displays for PubMed search results that meet a number of criteria, e.g., results with a minimum of 250 citations, filters are not active, the search does not include Boolean operators, the search retrieves a minimum of 4 relevant images calculated using a term weighted algorithm.

For additional information, please visit the NLM Technical Bulletin.

The Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA) was held May 18-23, 2012 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, WA. Attendees were invited to visit the NLM exhibit booth to meet NLM staff and see NLM Web products and services. The NLM Theater at the booth featured demonstrations and tutorials on a wide variety of topics. Recordings of the NLM Theater Presentations are now available:

• Disaster Health Information Update ( 27 min.)
• Drug, Toxicology & Environmental Health Update (20 min.)
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about ClinicalTrials.gov (14 min.)
• LinkOut and Submission Utility Update (8 min.)
• Managing Public Access Compliance Using My NCBI (27 min.)
• MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus Connect (23 min.)
• Native Voices and Other Voices (16 min.)
• NIHSeniorHealth Redesign (7 min.)
• Public Health & Health Services Research at NLM: A Tale of Two Portals (17 min.)
• PubMed Health (29 min.)
• PubMed Update (25 min.)
• UMLS and RxNorm Update (20 min.)

In addition, the PowerPoint presentations from the NLM Online Users’ Meeting, NLM Update, and DOCLINE Users’ Group Meeting are also available online.

Branching Out: The MeSH Vocabulary is an introduction to the development, structure and use of the MeSH vocabulary. The video may be of particular interest to searchers of MEDLINE/PubMed, and is used in the PubMed search classes offered by NLM and the National Training Center and Clearinghouse. This 11-minute video has been updated to include new 2012 screenshots of PubMed and MeSH. Branching Out is also available in m4v format for iOS devices and as a text transcript.

Yesterday, two new features were added to PubMed: filters sidebar and computed author sorted display!

In order to provide users with a more visible and accessible way to narrow PubMed results, the Limits page has been replaced by a results filter sidebar. The filter sidebar options will work the same way as the limit selections; that is, once a filter is selected it will be activated for subsequent searches until the selection is cleared. The PubMed default Review and Free full text filters have been moved to the filters sidebar. The “Filter your results” portlet will eventually be incorporated into the filters sidebar. For additional information about the filters sidebar, please read the NLM Technical Bulletin article and PubMed trifold.

The PubMed Abstract display was modified to display results using a ranking algorithm when users click the author search link. Because an author may share the same name with other authors, the objective is to display more relevant results by disambiguating common author names. The author name disambiguation process compares citations with the same author name. The similarity for each citation pair is measured by examining the metadata for both citations, such as co-authors, journal, title, affiliation, abstract, MeSH terms, grants, and publication date. For additional information about the computed author sorted display, please read the NLM Technical Bulletin article.

The next few Midday at the Oasis Sessions are listed here. Note that the April date is this Monday instead of the usual third Wednesday.

April 23rd — PubMed Health and MedlinePlus – A Tale of Two Sites
May 16th — Sexual Violence: Resources for Survivors and their Support Network
June 20th — Operation Health: Resources for Veterans and Their Families

Times
1-2PM (Pacific) | 10-11AM (Hawaii) | 1-2PM (Arizona) | 9-10AM (American Samoa) | 6-7AM next day (Guam)

Register here:
http://nnlm.gov/ntcc/classes/class_details.html?class_id=227

Presentation Title: PubMed Health and MedlinePlus – A Tale of Two Sites
Presenter: Kelli Ham, Consumer Health & Technology Coordinator
Description: PubMed Health is a relatively new offering from the National Library of Medicine and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Searching for health topics on a site like Google often brings up a result from PubMed Health, but a result from MedlinePlus may or may not appear. What is the difference between the two sites? This webinar will provide a closer look at PubMed Health and how it compares with MedlinePlus. We will discuss the site’s relevance for medical libraries, health professionals and consumers, and situations when MedlinePlus would be a more appropriate resource.

Presentation Title: Sexual Violence: Resources for Survivors and their Support Network
Presenter: Lynn Kysh, PSR Intern
Description: This webinar will provide an overview of the prevalent issue of sexual violence and resources for librarians to help survivors and their support networks. Participants will learn about who is affected by this issue and about the different experiences and needs of survivors. Health issues and information needs will be highlighted and will include resources focused on what happens during the reporting process, how to locate local agencies, how to help a loved one, symptoms of rape trauma syndrome, and prevention strategies for youth.

Presentation Title: Operation Health: Resources for Veterans and Their Families
Presenter: Kelli Ham, Consumer Health & Technology Coordinator
Description: This webinar will provide an overview of the most pressing issues faced by returning veterans and their loved ones, and what library staff can do to help. Participants will learn about the spectrum of health issues and information needs of military veterans and their families, quality health resources and mobile apps; directories of medical facilities and services, and information about support services for spouses and families of deployed troops.

To view previous Midday presentations, go to the Archives page.

The PubMed Abstract display now includes a “Save items” portlet that will provide users with an easy way to add items of interest to a My NCBI collection. My NCBI users that are signed in may click the “Favorite” button, which will turn blue when selected, and then adds the citation to a new My NCBI collection, Favorites. When signed in to My NCBI, the “Save items” portlet also includes a drop-down menu which will display a list of all the collections for your account. Clicking the star next to a collection name will automatically add the citation to the collection. You may also choose to create a new collection using the drop-down menu. To see more details, along with screen shots of this newly released feature, please visit the recent article in the NLM Technical Bulletin.