The video from yesterday's PubMed Search Clinic is now available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/pmupdate08.html so if you missed it you can still learn about the changes.

The presentation covers the changes made to PubMed including: automatic term mapping, citation sensor, and advanced search page.

Citation Senor:
It is a new feature designed for users seeking specific citations. Simply put the citation information into the search box and click Go. The Citation Sensor looks at that information and if it looks like it is citation information it will try and find matches. It will display the matches in a yellow box.

I see this as handy, but I have to say I really like the regular Citation Matcher that is listed on the left hand side (in the blue bar) of the front page. I like it because quite often people have the wrong spelling, wrong journal, wrong year when looking for a specific citation. I think the Citation Matcher makes it easier to account and adjust for these errors. For example, it suggests author and journal titles. There are a lot of ways to misspell Tchorzewski, however if you are close and at least type in Tch, PubMed will at least suggest the rest. You don't get that with Citation Sensor. But who knows maybe Citation Sensor will grow on me.

Automatic Term Mapping (ATM):
PubMed has had automatic term mapping for quite a while, they just have made some recent changes. The old ATM mapped search terms to subject, journal, and author tables in a certain order. If a match was found in the MeSH table it would stop mapping, it wouldn't search the author or journal tables. According to NLM this was frustrating to users. The new ATM still does check the original fields (subject, journal, author) in the same order but it also now checks all fields for phrase and individual terms.

July 2, 2008 changes to ATM:
Based on user feedback, they made some enhancements to ATM. Substance names (known as MeSH supplement or concepts) and MeSH with stand alone letters or numbers will not be broken apart and searched. They will be searched as a phrase. For example: "factor b" will not be split up.

The new ATM changes mean that users will retrieve more results. They found that searches retrieved on average 10% more citations. NLM has provided an FAQ for more information and reasoning for the new ATM.

Personally, I still don't like PubMed's searching and mapping features. I really really like the way Ovid maps and suggests terms. It almost forces keyword searchers to think about using MeSH terms. PubMed doesn't do that, people enter terms and are blindly mapped to terms and keywords. Yes, they can click the Details tab to see what it is doing, but how many users do that? Getting PubMed to search MeSH terms is better than it has been in the past but I still think it is clunky.

Advanced Search:
The beta for Advanced Search was launched on May 15, 2008. The screen has four collapsable sections allowing you to shrink or expand various sections as needed. The search box and the History are at the top, History works the same as previously. The Search by Field section is next and the default fields displayed are Author, Journal, and Publication Date which are the most commonly searched. However, you can search by other fields as well. Just right of the search fields input box there is an odd little icon/button that gives you access to the index for the selected field. The Limit section is the next section on the page and you can carry your limits to future searches using the lock icon (defaulted to carry your limits to future searches). Finally, there is the Index of Fields and Field Values box. This feature is helpful if you want to add multiple items from one specific index.

If after viewing the clinic, you still have some general PubMed suggestions you should consider sending an email to their customer service which you can find on the bottom of most NLM pages as Write to the Help Desk. The instructors feel that the PubMed improvements have helped with searching. If it hasn't they want your feedback with real searches and real examples.

Labels: ContinuingEducation, Medline Database, NLM, PubMed