The January 26, 2010 Technical Bulletin has some information about MyNCBI Enhancements as well as Advanced Search and Limits.
- Coming in early February Advanced Search page will be streamlined (see TechBull for pictures)
- Clipboard link will be added to the homepage
- A new Limits page with additional limits for dates and search field tags will be added
- Something called Search Builder will help users search using Boolean operators.
- On the Advanced Search Page, Search Builder will replace the Search by Author, Journal, Publication Date, and more and Index of Fields and Field Values sections. (I will try and keep an open mind, but I don’t think I am going to like Search Builder. It looks like it is another dumbing down of the system.)
- My Bibliography users can now download their citations in MEDLINE format which is very important for your reference manager programs.
- NCBI users can turn off the “Search Details” on PubMed search result pages. (Does this mean search details is staying?!) NCBI users will be able to turn off the search details feature in mid February, although why somebody would do that when that is one of the better features for savvy searchers is beyond me. But then again as a regular medical librarian some of the things they NCBI does with PubMed confounds me.
Personally one of the biggest enhancements NCBI could do is stop calling saved searches MyNCBI. They keep dumbing down the system for the “average” user but they fail to make some of the obvious changes like changing confusing wording like MyNCBI that normal people would not know means saved searches.