A redesign of PubMed’s My NCBI interface was released on September 25, 2008. The My NCBI Sign-In page now has additional features to help users easily access their accounts. (more…)

Recently, PubMed has undergone a flurry of enhancements and modifications. And that trend is very likely to continue! The latest changes include the way that Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) works and the introduction of a new Citation Sensor feature. These changes, along with the beta version of an advanced search mode for PubMed, were the highlights of a “PubMed Review” theater presentation from the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA). A detailed description of the new features is included in Boost for PubMed Search Results: New ATM and Citation Sensor Introduced, published in the NLM Technical Bulletin. (more…)

A network member writes:

“Here’s something that’s stumping me in PubMed. Say I find an article that’s in a foreign language. I want to find Related Articles that are only in English and Human. How do I do that?

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PubMed is designed so that the novice user can simply type search terms in a box with automatic mapping to MeSH terms. Therefore, some ask: “Do I really need to know how articles are indexed?”

“Yes, you do!” experienced searchers generally agree. They know how often they are challenged to find the five most useful references from a database of over 17 million citations. They also intuitively recognize that a feature such as PubMed’s Related Articles is shaped not only by the occurrence of words in article titles and abstracts but by the use of MeSH headings and subheadings. (more…)

The NLM Technical Bulletin continues to be a primary resource to keep up-to-date with PubMed. Here are some recent examples: (more…)

Quite by accident, I bought a news reader for my portable device. I wanted to purchase database software for my PDA and ended up getting a good deal on a suite of four programs, one of which was a news reader. So I decided to try it out with RSS feeds of interest to medical librarians. (more…)

By Josephine Tan
Education and Information Consultant, Clinical Programs
Library and Center for Knowledge Management
University of California, San Francisco
josephine.tan@library.ucsf.edu

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My NCBI account settings can now be shared using a special URL, allowing you to create settings in My NCBI that your users can see without having to sign in themselves! This feature may be used to activate filter tabs and library icons, select an Outside Tool, and set a Document Delivery preference.

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