Exciting PubMed Changes Coming

Posted by Maryanne Blake on May 9th, 2005 Posted in: News from NLM

---

The current NLM Technical Bulletin at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj05/mj05_issue_cover.html has three articles heralding some interesting and exciting changes to PubMed: full author name searching, RSS feeds for PubMed searches, and enhanced Single Citation Matcher searching.

Since 2002, PubMed has included full author names in it’s database (provided the publisher made these names available). However, that information has not been searchable until…coming soon. Read the Technical Bulletin article to learn all the ins and outs of full author name searching when it finally happens. One hint — for comprehensive results, use conventional author searching, i.e., lastname + initial(s).

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds are coming to PubMed searches via the Send To drop down menu. RSS allows a user to have PubMed content sent somewhere else — typically an RSS aggregator like Bloglines.com — much as My NCBI’s new email feature allows a user to have content emailed. However, RSS feeds do not direct content toward a user’s email address, thereby allowing a user to avoid cluttering their email box. For more information on RSS, see Greg Bodin’s article in the Dragonfly or drop by the poster at MLA by Greg Bodin, Dale Prince and Bryan Vogh called “Really Simple Syndication (RSS): The Future of Content Delivery” on Tuesday, May 17th.

Finally, two new enhancements will be coming to Single Citation Matcher. One is the ability to search for first author by simply checking a box. The other is an autocomplete feature for entering journal titles; a drop down selection box will appear and offer choices.

Many of these changes will probably happen in time for the 2005 MLA meeting. Watch for the announcements that let you know the changes have taken place.