MeSH® 2008 Introductory Pages and Tree Structures Now Available

The Introduction to the 2008 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is now available from the MeSH homepage. In Section 2, Structure of MeSH, the link 2008 Trees now includes the 2008 Tree Structures in their entirety in both HTML and PDF. This is a convenient way to view an entire tree subcategory on one screen. Section 4 has links to the vocabulary changes for 2008 including: New Descriptors; Changed Descriptors; Deleted Descriptors; and New Descriptors by Tree Subcategory.

Updated NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.gov Training Manual and UMLS® Basics Slides Available

The recently updated edition of the NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.gov training workbook and updated Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS® ) Basics slides are now available on the National Library of Medicine® Web site. The NLM Gateway portion of the workbook reflects changes through August 2007. The ClinicalTrials.gov section is completely revised to reflect the newly redesigned user interface (see New Look for ClinicalTrials.gov. NLM Tech Bull. 2007 Sep-Oct; (358):e2). The UMLS Basics slides reflect changes since April 2007, including new information related to SNOMED CT and its effect on the UMLS license process.

The workbook is available for downloading in Portable Document Format (PDF) and Microsoft Word formats. The slides are available in PDF format. These materials correspond to the NLM National Training Center and Clearinghouse training courses.

Feel free to use any part of the workbook or slides. You may customize parts for training programs, demonstrations, or workshops you conduct. These resources are not copyrighted.

PubMed®, Toxicology and Environmental Health Web resources, and Molecular Biology Information Resources training materials are also available from this Web site.

Papers of Arthur Kornberg Added to Profiles in Science®

The National Library of Medicine®, in collaboration with the Stanford University Archives, announces the release of an extensive selection from the papers of biochemist Arthur Kornberg (1918 - 2007), who received the 1959 Nobel Prize for his synthesis of DNA, on the Library's Profiles in Science Web site.

"Starting in 1950, Arthur Kornberg elucidated the biochemistry of the gene, enzyme by enzyme. He was the first to synthesize DNA in vitro, the first to synthesize an infective virus DNA, and he discovered many related enzymes that were essential for the development of recombinant DNA technology," said Donald A. B. Lindberg, M.D., director of the National Library of Medicine.

With this addition, the number of prominent researchers, public health officials, and promoters of medical research whose personal and professional records are presented on Profiles has grown to twenty-four.

Newly Maintained MEDLINE® for 2008 MeSH® Now Available in PubMed®

As of December 3, PubMed's MEDLINE citations, translation tables, and the MeSH database have been updated to reflect 2008 MeSH. Now that end-of-year activities are complete, MEDLINE via PubMed may be searched using 2008 MeSH vocabulary. See MEDLINE® Data Changes - 2008. NLM Tech Bull. 2007 Nov-Dec;(359):e6. for details on data changes. This article includes links to other relevant MEDLINE and MeSH-related articles. On December 4, NLM® resumed daily (Tuesday-Saturday) MEDLINE updates to PubMed (including the backlog of citations indexed since November 14 with 2008 MeSH).

OLDMEDLINE MeSH® Mapping Project - Update

As announced in New Feature for OLDMEDLINE. NLM Tech Bull. 2005 Sep-Oct;(346):e1., NLM® began the OLDMEDLINE Other Term-to-MeSH mapping project in 2005. OLDMEDLINE Other Terms are the original subject headings assigned to citations when they appeared in the print indexes. This project maps those terms to current MeSH vocabulary which is then maintained each year during year-end processing. For this project, all MeSH headings are added as major MeSH headings.

Since our last report, another 9,644 occurrences of about 550 Other Terms were mapped to MeSH in October 2007; approximately 89% of all Other Term occurrences are now mapped.

There are 1.7 million citations that have the journal subset value of OM which is searched in PubMed using jsubsetom which means that the citations originated from the OLDMEDLINE data project. Of these, over 1.3 million have all of their Other Terms mapped to MeSH; this is about 77% of the citations, an increase of about another 8,000 citations or 1% since our last report. These citations are now MEDLINE records. See Changes to OLDMEDLINE Records – Status Tag Change, NLM Tech Bull, 2006 Sep-Oct; (352):e3. for more information on the OLDMEDLINE status tag change.

New Quick Tour: Changing My NCBI Saved Searches

Following the update to 2008 MeSH, now is the perfect time to check and update your saved PubMed searches in My NCBI. A new three-minute Quick Tour, Changing Saved Searches, is now available on the PubMed Online Training page (from the Tutorials link on the PubMed sidebar) and on the Distance Education Program Resources page.

Papers of Maxine Singer Added to Profiles in Science

The National Library of Medicine® announces the release of an extensive selection from the papers of biochemist and science advocate Maxine Frank Singer on its Profiles in Science Web site. The project is a collaboration with the Library of Congress, the repository of her papers.

"For many years, Maxine Singer has been an inspiring leader in research and in public discourse over the ethical and political responsibilities of scientists," says Donald A. B. Lindberg, MD, director of the National Library of Medicine. Neither academia nor industry were welcoming to women scientists at the time Singer enrolled at Swarthmore as a chemistry major in 1948. But she had the fortune of finding supportive mentors there, at Yale while earning her Ph.D., and at the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases, which she joined as a postdoctoral fellow in 1956 and where she would remain until 1975.

With this addition, the number of prominent researchers, public health officials, and promoters of medical research whose personal and professional records are presented on Profiles has grown to twenty-five.