Greetings-
In response to an email question which came through on medref the other day, I have been made aware of some changes to MEDLINE with the latest reload. Perhaps you all are already aware of these changes, but, just in case, I am sharing with you some of what I have found out.
You might have noticed that when you go into Ovid MEDLINE, the default database is now for MEDLINE 1950-present, instead of 1966-present. This is because much of Old MEDLINE has been rolled into the regular MEDLINE database. There are about 500,000 citations remaining in old MEDLINE. Here is some of what Ovid has to say:
"The Ovid MEDLINE®, MEDLINE® In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, and Ovid OLDMEDLINE® databases have been reloaded. These reloads include the 2007 edition of MeSH® (Medical Subject Headings) from the National Library of Medicine. A complete description of the 2007 MeSH thesaurus changes are available from the NLM.
Other changes include improvements to the presentation of MeSH and Scope Note data. Previously, some references were duplicated in some scope notes. These duplications have been removed.
With this reload, 72% of the OLDMEDLINE citations have had all of their keywords mapped to the current MeSH. These records will be designated as MEDLINE records and loaded into the MED1 segment. The remaining 28% of OLDMEDLINE records remain in the Ovid OLDMEDLINE® segment. We are also pleased to announce that the Ovid OLDMEDLINE segment has been loaded as a standard Ovid Medline segment, enabling articles for linking and tool functionality."
Also, I found out from an email from Ovid tech support that a large number of duplicate records were deleted from MEDLINE with the reload.
For more information, please see http:///gateway.ut.ovid.com/gw2dsc/mednws.htm or the notification document from Ovid at O:\Reference\Ovid Medline 3rd notification.doc.
I hope that this information is helpful
Martha
Posted by biomedref at January 18, 2007 01:08 PM