Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) Changes and PubMed Searching – On Demand

Class Experience Level
Intermediate, Advanced

Every year, the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are updated. How does this affect your PubMed searches? What happens when a term gets changed, added, removed or moved to a different part of the MeSH hierarchy? How do you accommodate vocabulary changes over time in your comprehensive searches? How do you check your saved searches and alerts? 

This on-demand course, offered through the NNLM Moodle platform, provides answers and allows participants to engage with exercises to practice what you learn.

Please note that this is not an introductory course. It is intended for expert searchers. This course assumes that you understand that:

  • Restricting a PubMed search to MeSH terms eliminates non-indexed records from your PubMed results
  • A comprehensive search of PubMed must account for both indexed and non-indexed records

If you are unfamiliar with these concepts and are looking for an introduction to PubMed, please complete "How PubMed Works" prior to taking this course.

The class is available to you 24/7, so you can work at your own pace. 

Objectives:

Describe how the MeSH vocabulary is maintained 

Explain how the addition, revision, deletion and rearrangement of MeSH terms affect your PubMed searches 

Check your saved searches and alerts for needed changes 

Class Details

Platform: Moodle
CE Credits: 1.50
Class Experience Level: Intermediate, Advanced
This is a National NNLM class.

Class Contacts

Host/Instructor: Katherine Majewski, Rebecca Brown
Technical Assistance: Rebecca Brown