Searching for Meeting Abstracts

For those of you who are interested in locating meeting abstracts, always a difficult task, try the NLM Gateway.

Over 98% of the Meeting Abstracts in the NLM Gateway now include the conference name in the record. All of the meeting abstracts from a particular conference can be retrieved by searching the conference name. Use the new field qualifier [CN] (which will also search the Corporate Author in Meeting Abstracts, PubMed, and NLM Catalog).

For detailed information on the exact steps, see the Gateway FAQ: How do I search for abstracts from a particular professional conference?

From the NLM Technical Bulletin, Jan-Feb 2006, Technical Notes:  NLM Gateway Enhances Search and Display of Meeting Abstracts.

Using PubMed to scan Journal TOC

Many researchers and clinicians keep up to date by skimming the contents of their favorite journals. The PubMed® Single Citation Matcher has a fill-in-the-blank form that can be used as a quick way to find the citations included in PubMed for a particular issue of a journal.

For step by step instructions, see:
Skill Kit: Retrieving Citations from a Journal Issue in PubMed®. NLM Tech Bull. 2005 Nov-Dec;(347):e14.

Citation Tracker from Scopus

At the end of January, Scopus added a new feature that is just...well, just plain cool!

They're calling it 'Citation Tracker'.

Citation Tracker lets you look at citation counts for a particular author's works and presents a Citation Overview table by article title and year. Check it out!

Here's a few tips, though. And I do this so you won't do what I did, which is spend 10 minutes looking for the 'Citation Tracker' tab.

• Start off at the main page for Scopus.
• Click on author search (it's the last tab, after Basic Search and Advanced Search).
• Put in an author's name (follow the instructions for the appropriate syntax).
• Click on Search.
• Check the appropriate box for your author and then click 'Citation Overview'.

Here's a picture of what the citation overview table looks like.

Subject Subset Strategies updated

The following PubMed subject subset strategies were recently revised:

• Bioethics
• Cancer
• Complementary Medicine
• Space Life Sciences
• Toxicology

And lest you forgot, the Systematic Reviews subset was revised in December 2005.

For more detailed information see the subset strategies page.

For you history buffs...

In the fall of 2005, the National Library of Medicine began an OLDMEDLINE Other Term-to-MeSH mapping project. OLDMEDLINE Other Terms are the original subject headings assigned to the citations when they appeared in the print indexes. This project maps those terms to current MeSH vocabulary and will be updated each year during year end processing. NLM estimates that approximately 92% of the OLDMEDLINE citations now have at least one MeSH term. All current MeSH headings added to these records have been added as major MeSH headings. Additional work on this project will continue.

For more information about the MeSH Mapping Project and about searching OLDMEDLINE citations using MeSH, see the OLDMEDLINE description.

PubMed grows and grows...

On December 29, 2005, the number of citations in PubMed surpassed 16 million.

PubMed clipboard contents indicator

You may have noticed that PubMed now has an asterisk indicator for the clipboard tab. This lets you know that you've collected items and posted them to the clipboard. A simple mouseover will even tell you how many items you have. Very helpful!!

For more information, see the NLM Technical Bulletin.

Federated Searching: What's that all about?

If you've never heard of 'federated searching' then you're not alone! And that's not the only phrase that's used to describe this method of searching -- it can be referred to as: cross database searching, metasearching, broadcast searching.

Here's a simple explanation by way of a scenario:

You need to know what the experts are thinking about a current issue outside your area of expertise. You might have an inkling of where to search but not really. What you need is a tool that will guide your selection of appropriate resources based on your topic and then allow you to search across those selected multiple databases via a single search interface. Results should be presented either in chronological order, by database, or combined in a single merged list. Then you should be able to get right to the full-text of the article or book that you think is going to answer your question - right then and there.

What makes 'federated searching' different from using Google, Google Scholar or any web search engine is that instead of world wide web pages, you're searching across the resources of a University library - a myriad of unique, authoritative databases and resources from every discipline.

The Yale University Library is experimenting with just such a federated search tool and we'd appreciate any feedback you can give us.

Here's where you can try this out:
From the Yale University Library's Database and Article Searching page, click on Quick Start or Multi-Database Searching.

Please let me know what you think!

I'm back....

Even though writing a blog is a great learning experience and the scope of 'Search Tips' is extremely pertinent to what I do, it's a lot of work. And after the holidays, I just couldn't get up the gumption to resume... but I'm back now.

Interesting things are happening in the 'searching/finding' world and I'll try to keep you up to date!