Free On-Demand Course: MeSH Changes and PubMed Searching

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Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) Changes and PubMed Searching

Every year, the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are updated. How does this affect your PubMed searches? What happens when a term gets changed, added, or moved to a different part of the MeSH hierarchy? How do you accommodate vocabulary changes over time in your comprehensive searches? How do you check your saved searches and alerts?

This free on-demand course, offered through the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) Moodle platform, provides answers and allows participants to engage with exercises to practice what you learn.

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe how the MeSH vocabulary is maintained
2. Explain how the addition, revision, and rearrangement of MeSH terms affect your PubMed searches
3. Check your saved searches and alerts for needed changes

Please note that this is not an introductory course. It is intended for expert searchers. This course assumes you understand that restricting a PubMed search to MeSH terms eliminates non-indexed records from your PubMed results, and that a comprehensive search of PubMed must account for both indexed and non-indexed records. If you are unfamiliar with these concepts and are looking for an introduction to PubMed, please complete the “How PubMed Works” class (either live or on-demand) prior to taking this course.

This course offers 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the Medical Library Association.