Bio-Med Reference

New Home for Reference Indexes

The abstracts and indexes that had been on temporary storage at the old second floor preshelving area have now been moved to stacks 73 and 74 on the second floor of the library (those stack numbers will change once the serials stack shift is completed).

Del

PubMed left sidebar

Searching PubMed today, I thought I might be going a bit nutty because something looked odd about the results screen. The formerly persistent left menu bar was gone! You know, the one with links to single citation matcher, the MeSH database, the journals database, clinical queries, etc. It now shows up only on the PubMed home page. I checked the NLM Technical Bulletin, which had this not-very-illuminating explanation,

NLM® is introducing new PubMed searching and display changes in the coming weeks. To begin with, the blue sidebar menu is being removed from the Summary results screens to provide space for forthcoming features. Users will be able to access the sidebar from the PubMed homepage.

So, we shall have to see what future changes are afoot in PubMed. Stay tuned.

Martha

Ovid interface announcement

Below is an announcement regarding the new Ovid interface that is linked on our home page.

Jim

OVID Technologies (MEDLINE, CINAHL, etc.) released a major change to its search interface on Tuesday, July 12th. The basic search functions of the database remain the same, but Ovid has updated its look and usability.

Classic features such as “Explode”, “Focus” and “Scope Note” are carried over, along with some lesser known tools such as the “Contexts” button. This button appears on the subject heading “Tree” page and when clicked, displays all instances of any term within the taxonomy. Convenient “U of MN Find-It” buttons link to full text options and MNCat holdings.

In addition, the new interface offers some new functions:
• "Find Similar" - a feature similar to Pubmed's "Related Article" link
• "Find Citation" - a feature similar to Pubmed's "Single Citation Matcher"
• "Find Citing Articles" - a feature that links to the full text of citing articles. Please note: Ovid's "Find Citing Articles" only links to articles from journals that are available through Journals@Ovid. For more comprehensive citation searching, use ISI's Web of Science available through the http://www.biomed.lib.umn.edu/bms.html page under “W.”

Your web browser version may need upgrading to support forthcoming new features on Ovid. For best results, we recommend the following minimum browser versions:

• Internet Explorer 5.x and above
• Netscape 6.x and above

If you have difficulties with the new Ovid interface over the next few weeks, please report your problems to medref@umn.edu (our email reference service), or call the Reference Desk at 612-626-3260.

Ovid interface announcement

Below is an announcement regarding the new Ovid interface that is linked on our home page.

Jim

OVID Technologies (MEDLINE, CINAHL, etc.) released a major change to its search interface on Tuesday, July 12th. The basic search functions of the database remain the same, but Ovid has updated its look and usability.

Classic features such as “Explode”, “Focus” and “Scope Note” are carried over, along with some lesser known tools such as the “Contexts” button. This button appears on the subject heading “Tree” page and when clicked, displays all instances of any term within the taxonomy. Convenient “U of MN Find-It” buttons link to full text options and MNCat holdings.

In addition, the new interface offers some new functions:
• "Find Similar" - a feature similar to Pubmed's "Related Article" link
• "Find Citation" - a feature similar to Pubmed's "Single Citation Matcher"
• "Find Citing Articles" - a feature that links to the full text of citing articles. Please note: Ovid's "Find Citing Articles" only links to articles from journals that are available through Journals@Ovid. For more comprehensive citation searching, use ISI's Web of Science available through the http://www.biomed.lib.umn.edu/bms.html page under “W.”

Your web browser version may need upgrading to support forthcoming new features on Ovid. For best results, we recommend the following minimum browser versions:

• Internet Explorer 5.x and above
• Netscape 6.x and above

If you have difficulties with the new Ovid interface over the next few weeks, please report your problems to medref@umn.edu (our email reference service), or call the Reference Desk at 612-626-3260.

Ovid Clinical Queries

The newly added "Clinical Queries" limits in Ovid Medline are much like the Clinical Queries in PubMed, though the Ovid version provides additional options beyond the standard Therapy, Diagnosis, Etiology, and Prognosis. The additional ones are Reviews, Clinical Prediction Guides, Qualitative Studies, Costs, and Economics.

The methodologic filters used by Ovid may be seen at:

http://www.ovid.com/site/products/ovidguide/haynes.htm

If you have any questions about this, please let me know. Thanks, Kathy

History in PubMed is Now Editable!

As of the 5th of May, you can now edit your search History in PubMed. The search statements are hyperlinked, so that when you click on one, a drop down menu appears. From this menu you can AND, OR, NOT, delete statements, see the Details of the statement or just GO to the search results. The AND, OR, NOT function allows you to combine statements without having to type them in (and remembering to include the #'s and capitalize the AND/OR/NOTs)

JCR online

Journal Citation Reports (JCR), that part of Science Citation Index that reports Impact Factors for journals, is now available online to U of M patrons.

Log into Science Citation Index as you would normally. On the ISI Web of Knowledge homepage, select ISI Journal Citation Report from the drop down box at the top of the page. JCR includes only 2002 data (the same that we have in print/microfiche in the Reference Indexes).

I have asked that Shane to create a proxy URL for it, and add it to the Libraries' Indexes page.

Any questions, please ask. Kathy

retrieving subject headings for authors in Medline!

I just accidentally stumbled across an interesting behavior in OVID Medline that neither I nor Kathy had ever noticed before. If you do a search on an author's name, but instead of using the "author" button, you use the regular "perform search" button, in many cases it actually finds MeSH subject headings that are appropriate for that author's work!

This is presumably just the regular *query words to subject heading* mapping algorithm at work. Mapping (as I understand it -- others can correct me if needed and you are inclined) measures the frequency of your query words in the database records, collects the records with high frequencies, and then brings back subject headings based on the frequency of the headings present in those records. This method apparently works just fine for an author query word as well as a more typical "keyword."

This trick certainly wouldn't work correctly for common names. But who knows, it might prove to be a useful tool if ever we needed to, e.g., "classify" the research areas of a given set of faculty...