What’s New at NLM, NN/LM and Their Partners – September-October 2006
1. PubMed improvements facilitate MEDLINE database searching. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so06/so06_%20abstract_plus.html
PubMed has recently added several improvements to facilitate MEDLINE database searching.
a. AbstractPlus, an enhanced abstract view for PubMed results that displays:
- the abstract of an article, plus
- the first five Related Articles for each PubMed citation.
Related Articles are a precalculated set of PubMed citations that closely match the subject headings and words in the title and abstract of the original article. The related articles are displayed in ranked order from most to least relevant. The Related Articles function is useful for quickly locating additional citations relevant to your topic. After finding one good article, this function can augment your search by leading you to similar articles.
b. Searching by grant and contract numbers
A second recent improvement in PubMed allows searching by grant and contract numbers that designate funding by any agency of the U.S. Public Health Service (including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration, among other agencies) or Wellcome Trust. Journal articles that include the grant or contract number are now searchable back to 1981. For detailed information about how to search by grant and contract numbers see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj06/mj06_grant_numbers.html or PubMed Help, available from the left column of the PubMed home page.
2. PubMed Tutorial Updated
The National Library of Medicine has updated the PubMed Tutorials available from the PubMed sidebar. The updated sections incorporate changes to PubMed through August 2006 including the “Send to RSS” function and the AbstractPlus display. Please see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pm_tutorial_faq.html#sys_req
to view a list of recent changes.
3. PubMed Celebrates being 10 http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so06/so06_pm_10.html
In a single decade,a PubMed has evolved into an essential biomedical resource used throughout the world. Expect even more exciting and innovative developments in its future!
4. ToxMystery (http://toxmystery.nlm.nih.gov) is the National Library of Medicine’s new, interactive learning site for 7-10 year old children, which joins a number of other new NLM resources geared towards the general public. It provides a fun, game-like experience, while introducing potential environmental health hazards sometimes found in the home.
“Toxie” the cat helps find the hazards hidden in each room, and offers hints when needed. The objective is to find all the hazards. Players are treated to fun animations when they complete each area. When all the hazards in the house have been discovered, Toxie delivers an animated celebration, and players can print a personalized certificate.
ToxMystery’s Parent Resources page provides more detailed information about everyday environmental hazards that can be harmful to one’s health. A “For Teachers” page contains more than ten downloadable activity pages that can be used in elementary school classrooms.
ToxMystery has been enthusiastically tested by real kids, who enjoyed answering the questions and playing the game, hearing Toxie talk “about all the hazards,” watching items in the rooms “hover around and made sounds,” and seeing “Toxie do funny things when you finish a room.”
The NLM has provided an important set of environmental health databases for toxicologists and other scientists for many years. ToxMystery joins a number of other new NLM resources geared towards the general public (http://tox.nlm.nih.gov).
5. New NIH Research Matters eColumn
NIH Research Matters comes to you through an RSS feed or e-mailed alerts.
NIH Research Matters is an eColumn highlighting interesting research done by NIH and NIH-funded scientists. It’s written for people who want to keep up with NIH research developments but don’t necessarily have extensive scientific knowledge. You can subscribe to the RSS news feed (http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/feed.xml) or get alerts emailed to you when new stories are posted by joining the LISTSERV (https://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=nihresearchmatters-l&A=1). NIH Research Matters is at http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters.
6. New version of the NIHSeniorHealth.gov site has been released. Its features include:
a. New, less mechanical, voice
b. User activated new voice, the site reads each page as it’s loaded
c. New technology to display buttons and left menu items for better contrast and text re-sizing.
d. Improved footers with more detailed date information including first published date and the date last reviewed for each topic
7. Many years of American Journal of Public Health are now available full-text in PubMed Central at this URL. http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=259&action=archive
The archive for this journal includes:
* Am J Public Health: Vols. 61 to 94; 1971 to 2004
* Am J Public Health Nations Health: Vols. 18 to 60; 1928 to 1970
* Am J Public Health: Vols. 2 to 17; 1912 to 1927
8. Wikipedia entry about the National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Read about NLM including history and the ubiquitous “see also” reference, on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_Medicine
