Medline at LUHS WHAT IS MEDLINE? Medline is the premier biomedical database produced by the National Library of Medicine. It contains almost 10 million references to journal articles. Timespan covered: 1950 to present 3,900 journals indexed in 40 languages 88% of the current references are to articles in English 76% of the references have English abstracts Updated weekly: over 7,000 citations added each week Broad coverage: clinical sciences and basic research ACCESSING MEDLINE AT LUHS Medline is available through two access points on the library homepage Medline (Ovid); Search software provided by Ovid Technologies PubMed; Search software provided by National Library of Medicine Remote access through Archer proxy serve Links to full text journals owned by the library SEARCHING MEDLINE Formulate a search query Break your research question into concepts Does exercise or weight loss improve glucose intolerance? Concepts: exercise weight loss glucose intolerance Search each concept separately Using MeSH [Medical Subject Headings] MeSH is the controlled vocabulary used in Medline, eliminates the need for searching synonyms. Terms are mutually exclusive and the most specific subject heading available is assigned to the concept. There is a hierarchical structure showing broader terms and related narrower terms. Explode allows you to include all related in one retrieval. Explode "Hand" retrieves hand, finger, thumb; searching Hand without explode retrieves only Hand. When combining concepts it is better to stay broad at first, and then use limits or other restrictions to narrow your retrieval, if necessary. Major focus: Limits retrieval of a MeSH heading to the main point of the article. Subheadings: Limits retrieval to a specific aspect of the topic (i.e. diagnosis, etiology).