June 13, 2005
Free and Independent Traveler on the Information Highway: FIT-IH
The projected forecast is for Medicine moving to high tech/low touch on the Information Highway; your information future will be in your hands. This is the first of a series of emails designed to help you become a Free and Independent Traveler on the Information Highway (FIT-IH). These pre-flight checklists for searching the body of biomedical literature will start your preparation for your lifelong continuing education journey.
We'll begin with PubMed; the National Library of Medicine's World Wide Web interface for their medical literature citation database, and then move on to other electronic resources both on and through the World Wide Web.
In the next few follow up messages we'll look at PubMed starting with this overview and then messages on the special features of:
• Searching
• Special features
• Displaying search results
• Ordering journal article copies (Loansome Doc account)
• Links to full-text and library holdings
• My NCBI
• Single citation matcher
• Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
• Life preserver - Help
And now, the adventure begins.
PubMed® is the U.S. National Library of Medicine's premiere search system for biomedical information. It is available free on the Internet at http://pubmed.gov .
PubMed Content
• MEDLINE®, NLM's database of millions of references to articles published in biomedical journals
• OLDMEDLINE®, journal article citations from 1951 through 1965 (slowly adding citations back to 1877)
• In-process citations that have not yet been analyzed and indexed for MEDLINE
• Publisher supplied citations that may not receive full indexing for MEDLINE because they are non biomedical in nature
• Links to Entrez molecular biology databases.
PubMed Features
• Sophisticated search capabilities, with special tools for searching clinical topics
• Assistance in finding search terms using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Database, a guide to MEDLINE's controlled vocabulary
• Ability to store and update up to 100 different searches using PubMed's My NCBI
• Links to full-text articles and to information about library holdings
• Links to other NLM search systems, such as ClinicalTrials.gov®, MedlinePlus® (filtered links to patient education materials), NIH Clinical Alerts and Advisories, NLM Gateway® and PubMed Central (a digital archive of life sciences journal literature).
For online assistance look at the top of the blue NCBI sidebar for links to Overview, Help, FAQs, and an online Tutorial.
One thing to remember about PubMed --- like the producers of the original VW Beetle --- the National Library of Medicine is a firm believer in continuous improvement. The site is being continuously, incrementally, upgraded and added to. What you see today is not necessarily what you will see tomorrow. The old features are still there, they may have just relocated, and occasionally been renamed. Try to enjoy the changes, and remember, the only constant in life is change.
happy searching,
Alice E. Hadley, MLS, AHIP(D)
You ask, I'll answer
Medical Library
US Naval Hospital, Guam
The more you know the better you heal.
Back to the Table of Contents
for FIT-IH
Back to the FLS
Homepage