Use PubMed to access Medline, OLDMEDLINE, and more. PubMed is free to the public from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), but UCB users should access PubMed from this link to take advantage of special services offered to UCB students, faculty, and staff. Your browser must accept cookies for these functions to work, and you will need to be recognized as a UCB user to access licensed materials (e.g., journal articles) remotely.
UC e-Links: Access the article online (if available); link to UC Library catalog record (to get print version if not online); or use Request It, a service of Interlibrary Borrowing Services (to get articles from journals not at a UCB library).
Publisher and other icons may also lead you to the full text of articles.
Instruction: For PubMed or any topic, if you can gather a group of at least 5, make an appointment with one of our librarians at the reference desk, or call (510) 642-2511.
NLM Technical Bulletin: Keep up with news about PubMed and other NLM databases.
(Adapted from Feddern T. Tips for Finding Relevant MeSH Terms. Accessed February 16, 2005.)
If your term or concept won't "map" to a MeSH term, try the following:
Search for your term in the title field: yourterm[ti]. If the word is in the article title, a relevant MeSH term should be listed in the "Citation" display. Try this with several articles to get a list of likely MeSH terms. Also use British spellings of title words, if necessary.
You can expand this to include words in the title and/or abstract: yourterm[tiab].
When you find possible MeSH terms to use, look them up in the MeSH Browser. See where they appear on the Tree. Use broader or narrower terms, as seen on the Tree, if appropriate.
If you have any known articles on your concept, find them in PubMed (use Single Citation Matcher), and look up the MeSH terms for this/these articles.
Remember the difference between the infection and the agent/organism causing it. For example, are you interested in HIV or HIV infections? Similarly, don't confuse a symptom with a disease: Depression versus Depressive Disorder; or a medical specialty with a disease, condition, or intervention: Preventive Medicine versus Preventive Health Services; Pulmonary Medicine versus Lung Diseases.
Similarly, the MeSH term "epidemiology" is for the field of study. Use the epidemiology subheading to learn about this aspect of a disease or condition.
Drugs and substances can be classified under several different broader headings or classes. When you find a drug or substance in MeSH, it is important to look at where it appears on the Tree(s). You may need to broaden or narrow your search to get the best article citations for your topic. For example, are you interested in DDT, or all chlorinated hydrocarbons? Items listed as a substance may also have relevant MeSH terms. For example, your search may be something like: ddt[mesh] OR alpha-chloro-DDT [Substance Name] OR DDT-dehydrochlorinase [Substance Name], etc.
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