Lister Hill Letter
Newsletter of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at UAB

May/June 2000

NEW IMPROVED PUBMED

When the National Library of Medicine/National Center for Biotechnology Information first released PubMed in 1997, the major selling point of the new, end-user interface to MEDLINE and other databases was that it was free.  Now with the introduction of the new improved PubMed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ the claim can also be made that the service is good as well as free!
 
Improvements to PubMed include the following:

Limits: A major improvement is the ability to easily limit your search retrieval by clicking on the "Limits" hypertext link (not the check box beside it).  Limit options included are language, publication date, age, gender and publication type, among others.  Note: Currently, there is no ability to choose more than one option under a limit category.  For example, you cannot choose more than one publication type or age group, although some age segments have been categorized together as well as separately (e.g., "All Infant, birth to 23 months" as well as "Newborn" and "Infant").  Also, remember to turn off the Limits you have imposed in a previous search by clicking off the check mark in the Limit check box unless you want to maintain those limits in the new search.

History: For those of us accustomed to Ovid's easy ability to combine search sets, the old PubMed's "Advanced" search mode was decidedly clunky in this regard.  The new PubMed boasts a "History" feature by which you can combine previously searched terms.  Simply click on the History hyperlink, combine using the pound (#) sign with the set number and the Boolean operator in all caps (e.g., AND, OR or NOT).  Note: The maximum number of sets the History feature will hold is 100, after which it drops the "oldest" set.  After an hour of inactivity all sets are deleted from the History.  See also Preview/Index.

Clipboard: While viewing search results, you can now "Add to Clipboard" those references you wish to mark for saving, printing or ordering.  Click on the "Clipboard" hypertext link to view your marked choices and to save or print as desired.  The Clipboard will hold a maximum of 500 items and will delete entries after an hour of inactivity.

Preview/Index: The Preview feature allows you to preview the results of a search term or strategy prior to executing it, plus combine sets similar to the History feature.  The Index feature allows you to search within a specific field (e.g., author, title, MeSH subject heading, etc.), and search for variations of terms with corresponding retrievals.  For example, a search in the "MeSH Terms" field for subjects beginning with "chickenpox" retrieves terms and retrievals for not only the disease but also "chickenpox vaccine" and its subheadings.  (Remember however, searching in the MeSH terms only effectively eliminates PreMEDLINE citations, those newer references in PubMed which haven't yet been assigned MeSH headings.)

Of course, many nice features of the old PubMed were retained, such as: the Related Articles links; the Clinical Queries filters for evidence-based medicine articles; the Single Citation Matcher to complete or correct inaccurate references; the MeSH Browser; links to NCBI genetic sequence information and databases; and Loansome Doc document ordering service.  Please note also that since many of the new features of the new PubMed are dependent on the user's ability to accept "cookies" at his or her Web browser, those who use computers behind firewalls or who may be similarly prohibited from accepting cookies should use the Old PubMed available from the sidebar for the time being.