INFORMATION UPDATE "Offering Information Solutions" June, 2002 Number 33 A Monthly Publication of Shamel Information Services mailto:InfoUpdate@shamelinfo.com ============================================================ Welcome to INFORMATION UPDATE, the free monthly newsletter for people who need to know. For subscription information, refer to notes at the end of this newsletter. ------------------------------------------------------------ IN THIS ISSUE ------------------------------------------------------------ => Do It Yourself - A PubMed Quiz => Notes, News and Announcements => Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information ------------------------------------------------------------ DO IT YOURSELF - A PubMed Quiz ------------------------------------------------------------ I often get questions about the resources available for locating scientific publications related to medicine and healthcare. This newsletter has mentioned PubMed as a valuable resource. http://www.pubmed.gov In fact, PubMed is so good, that some have come to believe that it must have all the answers. It's easy to conclude that if it's not in PubMed, it doesn't exist. But there are other resources which index the medical literature. The following "Quiz" will help illustrate what PubMed has, and what else is out there. Over the next month, I will be giving this quiz to a number of research scientists. In the July newsletter, I'll let you know how they do. In the meantime, why don't you give it a try? I'd like to know how you do. The answer key is at the end of the page. True False 1. PubMed and Medline are two names for the same database. True False 2. In PubMed, the Boolean operators are case- sensitive (i.e. “and” will return different results from “AND”) True False 3. To retrieve references most recently added to the PubMed database, use keywords rather than MeSH terms. True False 4. Besides journal article citations, PubMed also includes conference proceedings and abstracts. True False 5. For a comprehensive search of the cancer literature, it is important to search both PubMed and CancerLit. 6. EMBASE is a database that includes more European journals than PubMed and is known for good early drug research. The over lap in coverage between PubMed and EMBASE is: A. 30-35% B. 45-50% C. 75-80% D. over 90% 7. PubMed indexes over 4,000 journals. BIOSIS (Biological Abstracts online) indexes: A. About the same number as PubMed B. About the same number as EMBASE C. Over 6,000 titles D. none of the above 8. To locate information from meeting abstracts, reviews, books, book chapters, notes, letters, and selected institutional and government reports, search: A. PubMed B. EMBASE C. BIOSIS D. PubMed and EMBASE 9. PubMed coverage goes back to: A. the early 1950’s B. the mid-1960’s C. 1972 D. the mid-1980’s ------------------------------------------------------------ Notes, News, and Announcements ------------------------------------------------------------ Although Information Update has hundreds of readers, it seems that no one was able to locate any Missing Money using http://www.missingmoney.com, the web site listed in last month's newsletter. Or perhaps they did locate some missing money and they're off vacationing in Tahiti! Special Libraries Association, June 8-13, 2002, Los Angeles, California http://www.sla.org - Be sure to visit the AIIP booth #1242 in the exhibit hall. ============================================================= The Shamel Information Services web site at http://shamelinfo.com contains Information Update archives. Just click on "Newsletters" and check for any issues you might have missed. -------------------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE -------------------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions to INFORMATION UPDATE are free. You may subscribe or unsubscribe by sending a message to: mailto:InfoUpdate@shamelinfo.com with SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Copyright 2002 Shamel Information Services Please feel free to forward this issue to colleagues, in its entirety. Other uses without permission may violate copyright. Online archives at http://shamelinfo.com/newsletter.htm =============================================================== Cynthia L. Shamel, editor Shamel Information Services Poway, California mailto:cshamel@shamelinfo.com Ms. Shamel is currently President-Elect of the Association of Independent Information Professionals http://www.aiip.org and a member of the Special Libraries Association. Telephone: 858-673-4673 Toll Free: 800-330-9939 ================================================================ The Quiz Answers 1. False. PubMed includes a) out-of-scope citations (e.g., articles on plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed for MEDLINE; b) citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing; and c) some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral™ and receive a qualitative review by NLM. 2. True 3. True. References just added to the PubMed database do not yet have MeSH terms assigned. Using keywords is the only way to retrieve them. 4. False. PubMed does not contain conference proceedings or abstracts. 5. False. The National Library of Medicine recently combined CancerLit and PubMed, so they no longer need to be searched separately. 6. A - 30-35% overlap between PubMed and EMBASE 7. C - over 6,000 titles 8. C - BIOSIS 9. B - the mid-60's - For material published before that, it is important to use the print Index Medicus.