Q: How often is MEDLINE data loaded?
A: New MEDLINE data is loaded weekly.
Q: What are In-process records?
A: In-process articles have been very recently added to the database and are not fully indexed. Therefore, these records may not yet contain MeSH headings or other value added information.
Q: What is the time span for coverage in the MEDLINE database?
A: Generally speaking, MEDLINE covers articles indexed from 1966 to the present. Most of them were published in or after 1966, but there are about 109,000 records that were published from 1963 - 1965.
Q: Why is my search retrieving so many results that do not seem pertinent to my search when searching in the topic field?
A: The search syntax has been revised and the implied search operator has changed from ADJ (adjacency) to AND. Previously, a search on heart attack would have retrieved results with the phrase heart attack. Now, the result set will include all records that contain the words heart and attack anywhere in the record. If you want the result set to include the phrase heart attack, place the phrase in double quotes; “heart attack”. The change in the implied search operator will only effect the topic field. Also, if you do not include the terms in double quotes the phrase will not map to MESH headings.
Q: What is OLDMEDLINE?
A: Records in the MEDLINE database that cover the years 1950 - 1962, as well as some records from 1963 - 1965, are contained in OLDMEDLINE. OLDMEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine's online data of approximately 1,760,000 citations to articles from international biomedical journals covering the fields of medicine, preclinical sciences and allied health sciences from 1950 through 1965. Within this subset of records are articles dating from 1950 - 1959 that originally appeared in the Current List of Medical Literature (CLML) and articles dating from 1960 - 1965 that originally appeared in the Cumulative Index Medicus (CIM). These records were converted into machine-readable form between 1996 and 2004 to create OLDMEDLINE.
There is also a subset of records dating from 1963 - 1965 that are not considered part of OLDMEDLINE but as part of MEDLINE.
Q: What is MeSH?
A: MeSH, which stands for Medical Subject Headings, is a controlled vocabulary of biomedical terms used for indexing documents in MEDLINE. MeSH was developed and is maintained by the National Library of Medicine, the producer of MEDLINE.
You must use subject headings to search the MeSH Terms field in MEDLINE. Qualifiers, also known as subheadings, are controlled terms that qualify or add context to subject headings. The MeSH thesaurus also contains non-preferred or entry terms that serve as access points to subject headings.
Q: In the Topic search field, what does "Map to medical subject headings" mean?
A: The feature called "Map to medical subject headings" automatically maps each search term to a term in MeSH. Mapping to MeSH enables you to retrieve records which may not contain the exact term(s) you are searching for but which are very relevant to your search.
If the term you enter can be mapped to multiple subject headings, you will be able to select the headings that best describe the concept. Some terms cannot be mapped because there are no subject headings synonymous with or closely related to them.
Q: In the Topic search field, what does "Map to MeSH and Explode" mean?
A: The "Map to MeSH and Explode" option maps your terms to MeSH and includes any terms subordinate to the main MeSH terms in your search. For example, if you search the term Food Poisoning and you choose to explode it, your search will also retrieve records containing MeSH terms describing specific types of food poisoning, e.g. Botulism, Mushroom Poisoning, and Salmonella Food Poisoning.
Q: What is the proper way to search for author names in MEDLINE?
A: Even though MEDLINE captures author names exactly as they appear in the source publication, including full first names, it is advisable to search for an author by truncating after the first initial. Alicia Martinez may be represented in the database as Martinez, Alicia or Martinez, Alicia G or Martinez A.
Additionally, suffixes such as Jr., Sr., and II cannot be searched as part of author names.
Q: What is a Citation Alert?
A:
Click here for more information.
Q: What is One-click Search and where can I use it in MEDLINE?
A: For author names and terms in certain other fields, click the link on the Full Record page to immediately retrieve all records in MEDLINE (within the selected time span) that contain the selected author or term. The new set is automatically added to your Search History.
Links enabling a user to perform a One-click Search will appear on the Full Record page for data in the following fields: Author Name, MeSH Terms, Chemical Substances, and Grant Information.
