Archive |
What's New in PubMed?PubMed has added several new features and content in recent months. Noteworthy among these are LinkOut to full text publications, helpful icons, a Journals Database, and expanded bioethics content. PubMed LinkOut enables HSLS users to go directly from a PubMed citation to HSLS electronic full text articles. In order to use the LinkOut feature, you must access the database through the PubMed link on the HSLS Web site <www.hsls.pitt.edu>, or through the HSLS remote access login. Your Internet browser must be set to accept cookies. After opening a PubMed session, conduct your search as usual. When journal content is available through LinkOut, the HSLS icon will be visible in the abstract display. Click this icon to view the full text article in a new browser window. Keep in mind that HSLS does not subscribe to all the journals indexed in PubMed, and not all journal publishers participate in the LinkOut feature. The best way to determine if HSLS subscribes to an electronic or print journal is by searching PITTCat <pittcat.pitt.edu>, the online library catalog for University of Pittsburgh. Helpful icons, another new PubMed feature, have recently been added to the Summary Display of citations. Two of these icons indicate whether or not an abstract exists for an article. The third icon links to the full text articles freely available through PubMed Central <www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov>.  A new Journals Database, accessible on the left sidebar of PubMed, can be used to search for a journal (by abbreviation or by the full title) and then link to PubMed citations for articles in that journal. In addition to displaying the journals retrieved by your search, additional ‘related’ journals are suggested, based on your search terms. The suggestions are derived using an algorithm that compares letter combinations in phrases. You can then link to any journal in the list of suggested journals displayed at the top of the PubMed page. Did you know that PubMed also provides access to bioethics? Over the past few years, specialized citations that were unique to the former BIOETHICSLINE database have been integrated into PubMed. Most recent additions include citations to court decisions and legislation. PubMed is a dynamic database that is continually adding new content and features to improve the ease of end-user searching. Watch for information about these changes in future issues of the HSLS Update. --Amy Gregg |
