Visit us on Facebook Visit us on Linked In Visit us on Twitter Visit us on Instagram View our RSS Feed 
Apr
21
Posted by nwsoadmin on April 21st, 2005
Posted in: News from NLM
A medical resident comes into the library to find information for his Grand Rounds presentation in 4 hours. He performs a quick PubMed search, and retrieves 428 citations. In the search result, the library’s icon marks articles which are immediately available, electronically or in print.
Next to the complete set of results, a tab tells him that 53 articles are available from the library. He clicks the tab to focus on what can be accessed quickly. After selecting several articles under the library tab, the resident returns to the complete set of results and finds several more articles that are not available at the library for further study. He requests them from the library’s document delivery service directly through PubMed.
Too good to be true? Not at all. Recent development of LinkOut, Outside Tool and Document Delivery Service (DDS) by the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine allows libraries to connect users to local resources (“localize”) in PubMed by providing easier, more focused, means of linking to a wide variety of related web-accessible resources and additional services, such as OpenURL-based link resolvers and local document delivery services.
The ability to localize electronic resources for a user population is a feature increasingly valued by both researchers and librarians. For users, localization features provide seamless access to available resources. For libraries, localization features allow spotlighting of and direction to resources that are readily available or of high interest to their users.
A variety of special URLs and My NCBI Filters are available for use in localizing PubMed. Special URLs allow users to activate a library’s local profile in PubMed. The My NCBI feature allows easy branding and identification of a library’s holdings in a PubMed search result by grouping library holdings as a result tab in PubMed searches. Citations with links to other materials of interest can be grouped as result tabs as well.
A few examples of how localization might be used:
• A small hospital library uses a special URL to display library holdings and automatically apply their library icon to all PubMed citations with links to free full-text, clearly marking all articles available to their users.
• A departmental library at a large institution uses a filter tab to group departmental holdings and a special URL to display a link to the institution-wide link resolver on PubMed citations. Users recognize which articles are immediately available and can locate or order others.
• A hospital library selects two additional filters besides their library holdings: one filter tab highlights citations with links to National Guideline Clearinghouse material, of particular interest to their clinicians, and another filter tab displays the holdings of their affiliated medical school.
Details about using special URLs can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/doc/localizing.html
For more information about using Filter Selections in My NCBI , please see the documentation at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/help/pmhelp.html#FilterPreferences
Participation information for LinkOut, Outside Tool and DDS can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/doc/lbsub-i.html
Comments and questions about LinkOut can be sent to .
The LinkOut User Meeting at MLA ’05 will focus on localizing PubMed. Please join us: May 17 (Tue), 7:30 – 9 AM, Room: River 008A.
ABOUT nwsoadmin