MEDLINE (PubMed) USER GUIDE
PubMed provides access to bibliographic information, which
is drawn primarily from MEDLINE (NLM's premier bibliographic database covering
the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care
system, and the pre-clinical sciences), PreMEDLINE (NLM's in-process database
for MEDLINE), as well as Publisher-Supplied citations. In addition, for
electronically supplied journals that are indexed selectively for MEDLINE, and
include articles unrelated to medicine or the life sciences, PubMed includes all
articles from that journal, not just those that are included in MEDLINE.
Additional access and links are given to the integrated molecular biology
databases included in NCBI's Entrez retrieval system. These databases contain
DNA and protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, population study data
sets, and assemblies of complete genomes in an integrated system.
BEFORE BEGINNING:
- List ideas and concepts that describe your search topic.
- Narrow your topic. Remember your goal is to get a manageable number
of useful records.
- Think of as many search terms as you can that describes your topic
ACCESS:
- Go to the UCF Libraries home page at http://library.ucf.edu
- Click on <Articles & Databases>
- Click on the letter <M> in the Titles alphabetical menu.
- Click on
MEDLINE
1966-date  |
No Restriction |
NLM |
SEARCH:
- Click in the query box and enter your search term/s. Use Clear to
erase term/s in the search
box.
- Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) in upper case to combine terms.
- Press <Enter> or click <Go>.
- Modify your search by adding or eliminating terms on the query box or in
<Details>.
- Enter key words, phrases or contributors' names in the search box.
You may use the logic operators AND, OR, NOT.
Example:
- Limit your search to make results more relevant. Click on
the Limits tab immediately
below the Search for box and make your selections from several
pull-down ranges: English or language, human or animal, gender, age group, or
author, subject, or date range.
- Use the <All Fields> pull-down menu to specify a field you want
to limit such as author, entrez date, issue, journal name, language, ages,
gender, human or animal, MESH terms, title word, title/abstract word, etc.
- Author Names: enter the last name plus initials (no
punctuation) smith ja
Use double quotes around the author's name with the author search field
tag [au] to turn off the automatic truncation "smith ja" [au]
- Journal title: Qualify the journal title with the Journal
title search field tag AORN Journal [ta]
Search the Medline abbreviation of the title AORN J [ta]
Do not use ISSN numbers to retrieve older citations
- Limit retrieval to only citations that contain an abstract by using
the check box next to only items with abstracts. Items prior
to 1975 do not have abstracts.
- Use the <Publication Types> pull-down menu to specify clinical
trials, practice guidelines, randomized controlled trial, reviews, letters
or editorials.
- Select a language from the <Languages> pull-down menu
- Select subsets (MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, Publisher, AIDS, or Toxicology
where appropriate), ages, human or animal, and/or
gender to further limit the search.
- Further limit by entrez date or publication date. Enter dates
using the format YYYY/MM/DD. Date ranges are entered with a colon
inserted between each date, e.g., 1998:2000. PubMed's date
fields include: date of publication [dp], Entrez date [edat], and MESH
date [mhda].
- Search limits may exclude PreMEDLINE and publisher supplied citations.
- Click on <Go> to execute the search.
- If you select a limit and either run a search or move to another
screen, a check will appear in a box next to Limits on the Features bar
to inform you that limits have been set. To turn off the limits
before running your next search, click on the box to remove the check.
DISPLAY:
- Citations matching your query appear below the search box on the page
after your search is performed.
- Results will be displayed in a summary format initially.
- Change the display by using the <Display> pull-down menu to select
the format: summary, brief which includes first author, part of the title and
the PMID number, abstract which includes the abstract but no MESH headings,
citation which includes abstract and MESH headings, MEDLINE which shows all
fields separately, ASN.1, XML, SGML, or to display related articles or
various links of the specific keys for the categories listed above.
- Citations are displayed in reverse chronological order (last in, first
out), the date the record was initially added to PubMed, not the publication
date. Use the Entrez Date pull-down menu to limit retrieval to a
pre-selected range of dates.
- The <Related Articles link>, in blue to the right of the records
you are viewing, displays citations in ranked order from the most to least
relevant compared to the citation you linked from.
RETRIEVE a CITATION:
- Click on the author's name to view further information about the article.
-
- Influence of water run training on the maintenance of aerobic
performance.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1996 Aug;28(8):1056-62.
PMID: 8871917 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
- Citations include the author (s) last name and initial (s), article
title, abbreviation of the journal title, year/month of publication, volume,
issue and page number on which the article is found.
- To view more than one citation, mark the records by placing a checkmark
in the box to the left, choose the format you wish to view from the pull-down
menu and then click the <Display> button.
- To view all retrieved citations, click the <Display> button
without marking citation.
JOURNAL BROWSER:
- Once you have found the citation/s you want, use the journal browser to
translate the journal abbreviations into the full titles of the journals you
want.
- Click on <Journal Browser> under PubMed services from the left
sidebar menu.
- Search for journals by entering journal title, title abbreviation, or the
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) in the search space provided.
- Click on <Go>.
- Displayed will be a list of titles matching your request.
- A list of journals with links to full-text is also included in the
browser.
USING the CLIPBOARD:
- After displaying the records retrieved from your search, you can then
click in the boxes to the left of the records you wish to view.
- You can then sort, print, save or order the
citations in the Clipboard.
- The Clipboard allows you to save and view selected citations from one or
several searches.
- To add records to the clipboard, click on <Add to Clipboard>.
- When you are ready to print, click on the <Clipboard> link to go
there.
- Display citations in the format you want and use Sort to change
the order in which the citations are displayed
- The maximum number of citations that can be put on the Clipboard is 500
- The Clipboard items will be lost after 1 hour of inactivity
- Use your browser's print function to print the page of citations
PRINT:
- If you want to print only one record, use the browser's <Print>
button
- Click on the <Show> pull-down menu, below the Display button, to
increase the number of citations to be displayed per page.
- Click Display.
- You can only print the citations from the displayed page.
- Be sure you have selected the format you need. What you see
displayed is what will print.
- Once the article/information has been loaded, print by clicking on either
the <Print> button on the tool bar or by clicking on <File>,
then <Print> and <Ok>.
DOWNLOADING CITATIONS:
- Click on the <Save> button to download citations:
- You may save your citation(s) as either a plain text file or as an html
file:
- To save as plain text, from the <Save As> box, name the file
and add “.txt” to the filename -- save this way if you plan to view in a
word processing program.
- To save as an html file, from <Save As> box, name the file and
add “.html” to the filename -- save this way if you plan to view in a web
browser.
MEDLINE PLUS:
Health information from the National Library of Medicine on a wide variety of
topics including diseases and conditions, nutrition and fitness.
- Click on <Consumer Health> under <Related Resources> in the
left side bar.
- Type search terms in Search box.
url of this page:
http://library.ucf.edu/Instruct/Education/medlineuser.htm
Prepared by: Terrie Sypolt,
Reference Librarian
