5. FIT-IH: PubMed Display
Deciding how to display your search results in PubMed is a wonderful example of the tyranny of too many options. Unlike Google, where what you see is
what you get, in PubMed you can change the way you see a list of results. You can vary 1) the number of items on a page, 2) how much information you
will see about each item, and 3) the order the items are displayed in. The resulting 224 combinations of viewing options tend to cause people to stay
in the default display to avoid choice exhaustion. That is too bad as some of the other displays are quite helpful for different searching needs.
On the Action Bar (under the Feature Bar) the default is the "Summary" display, showing "20" items per page, and sorted by the date entered into
the database (this date is not the publication date - some times these are
years apart).
Changes to the display can be applied to an individual record or to a page of records. Clicking on the author's name will take you to the "Abstract"
display of that one reference.
The default display is useful for a quick and dirty guide to what's available on a fairly fast loading page. It shows a "Summary" of the
citation, and includes the authors, article title, journal title, notes if
it is a review article, the language if the article is not in English, gives a note if there is no abstract available, the PubMed identification number
(PMID), any comment/correction links, and a note on the citation status ("in
process" or complete). "Summary" also displays icon links next to each citation to show if the record includes an abstract, or if the full article
is available free in PubMed Central ( http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/)
or
elsewhere.
The icons for availability of an abstract or free full-text show a yellow piece of paper under the record number. A plain sheet has no abstract and
is not available online for free. A sheet with just three lines on it has
just an abstract available (click on the icon or the author's name to go to the abstract). A sheet with lines and an orange stripe at the top is
available for free in PubMed Central, and a sheet with lines and a green
stripe at the top is available for free somewhere else on the Web. To see the full-text click on the icon or the author's name to go to the abstract,
and then click on the icon for the free full-text provider.
Depending on how much information you want to see about each reference you can choose any of 7 other "Display" options with differing information or
formats. There are also displays for links to other databases, and strange gene banks that are rarely of use to clinical users.
You can also change the way the records are displayed by changing the "Sort" from the date entered in to PubMed to alphabetical by "Author" or "Journal"
title, or by "Pub[lication] Date" of the article.
To help me find indexing terms that will improve the precision of my search on a topic I change the display to "Citation" or "MEDLINE" so that the
indexing terms are shown. If the first few records are labeled as "In
Process" they will not have terms as they have not yet been indexed. The rest will show the indexing terms after the abstract. In Libraryland this
is called "panning for gold". "Citation" is prettier than "MEDLINE", but
without the geeky codes that make MEDLINE such a great searchable database.
If there are more than 20 records, and I am using a 56K modem, I usually change the display to 50 items per page so that I can look at them without
having to keep waiting for the graphics to reload.
In the "Abstract" display you see any available abstracts as well as any links to pay-per-view or free full-text sources. With a 56K modem this
display can be glacially slow to load because of the size of the page.
(More about the full-text links in the next message.)
If I am looking for a specific article that I will recognize if I see it but can't quite recall enough to call it up directly, I may change the display
to "Brief". This shows the first author's name, the first 30 characters of
the article title, and the PubMed identification number ( PMID) and is very fast loading.
If you have a burning desire to put your search results up on the Web you can change the display to XML. This gives you the "Abstract" display in XML
code, ready for uploading to your Web or intranet site, or fill your Modern Art quota for the day as the presentation is something like an e. e.
cummings poem.
If you use reference managing software use the MEDLINE display. This is the format the software requires to import MEDLINE records.
happy displaying
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