PubMed is a web-based retrieval system and a database of bibliographic information.

PubMed consist of:

· MEDLINE , which is NLM’s premier bibliographic, database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and the health care system. MEDLINE records are incorporated into PubMed weekly.

· A query box where you enter your search terms. Regardless of the page you are on, PubMed, Limits, History, or any of the others -- the query box will always be available to you.

Search PubMed for terms go here GO CLEAR

· Automatic Term Mapping

Any combination of search terms can be typed in the query box. PubMed looks in MeSH, journal title, phrase lists and author…lastly it searches individual words in all fields.

· A features bar with access to additional search features.

Limits Preview/Index History Clipboard Details

Limits searches to specific fields, age, gender, type of study, publication date, language, types of articles, subsets.

Preview/Index is to preview the number of search results before displaying the citations or view & select terms.

The History feature is used to view and combine your previous search queries.

The Clipboard feature is used to collect selected citations from one or several searches for further action.

Details is the query box with the actual search strategy and syntax used to run the search. It may include MeSH vocabulary term mappings The display will include any error messages, such as stopwords, truncation warnings, and misspellings.

· A sidebar (left side) with links to PubMed Services:

Journal Browser allows you to search for journals in PubMed. You can locate the journal using:

· The title of the journal.

· The ISBN (International Standard Serial Number).

· The MEDLINE journal title abbreviation.

MeSH Browser allows you to browse the MeSH Vocabulary.

· MeSH is the acronym for "Medical Subject Headings.”

· The MeSH controlled vocabulary is a distinctive feature of MEDLINE.

· Indexers can also assign subheadings to further describe a particular aspect of a MeSH concept.

Single Citation Matcher helps you find a single citation with a fill-in-the-blank format.

· Enter as much information as you have to locate a single citation or items from a particular volume of a journal.

Clinical Queries has built-in search "filters" designed for clinicians.
It uses these "filters" to reduce retrieval to articles that report research done with specific methodologies.

Four study categories or filters are provided within Clinical Queries:

· therapy (default)

· diagnosis

· etiology

· prognosis

Two emphasis categories or filters are also provided:

· sensitivity -- also referred to as "recall", includes relevant articles, but probably including some less relevant; will get more retrieval

· specificity (default) -- also referred to as "precision"; will get less retrieval

Cubby allows you to store search strategies and set LinkOut preferences.

· You can check for new items added to PubMed since you last stored or updated your search.

· You need to register for the Cubby and then login whenever you want to use it.

· Your web browser must be set to accept cookies.

The Action Bar is displayed on the citation pages:

Display Summary Sort Save Text Clip Add Order

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Citations:

· PubMed citations are displayed by default in the Summary format, which consists of the following:

Author, title, source and additional notations

· Citations can be displayed in the brief format, the abstract format, the citation format, the Medline format (2 character tagged fields), and others.

· Click on the display button to choose the format.

Text Button:

· Click on the Text button to display your retrieval in plain text.

· This is recommended for printing results without PubMed's sidebar and other buttons.

· Set the Display pull-down to the desired format.

· Set the Show pull-down to the desired number of citations per page.

Clipboard:

· The Clipboard lets you collect selected citations from multiple searches.

· To add citations to the Clipboard, click on the check box to the left of the citation, and Click the Add to Clipboard button.

· Once a citation has been added to the Clipboard, the item's number changes color.

· Within the Clipboard, you may view, save, print, order (through Loansome Doc), or remove citations.

Loansome Doc:

· PubMed uses an automated document ordering program called Loansome Doc.

· You will need to establish an agreement with that library before you can use this ordering feature.

· The library will provide you with a Library ID, which you will use when setting up the service within PubMed.

· Registration is required to create your User ID and password for ordering full-text.

LinkOut Preferences:

· This service enables publishers, aggregators, libraries, biological databases, sequence centers, and other Web resources to display links to their sites on records in PubMed.

Related Articles:

· This link is as straightforward as it sounds.

· PubMed uses a word-weighted algorithm to compare words from the Title, Abstract, and MeSH of each citation.

· The best matches for each citation are pre-calculated and stored as a set.