Have you ever wondered how to save a search strategy while in Medline? The National Library of Medicine's PubMed now offers this service through its new Cubby feature. This article will review how to use this very helpful tool.

Cubby is in the early stages of beta testing another feature, Link Out. This feature links citations with online journals, via library holdings and other avenues of access. The Scott Memorial Library is not participating in the beta test. The beta 1.0 version of the Link Out feature is already available for use. Look for a future article on Link Outs.

Both PubMed and Cubby are free. However, registration for Cubby is necessary. On the left blue sidebar of the PubMed front page is a link to Cubby, under PubMed Services. You must login to Cubby prior to searching PubMed in order to utilize any of its features. Furthermore, in order to use Cubby, your browser must be set to accept cookies.

PubMed Cubby does require a simple registration process for new users, and does not limit the number of Cubby accounts an individual can have. When you click on Cubby on the left blue bar of PubMed's home page, it goes to the login screen and prompts new users to register. It also asks for either your mother's maiden name or your pet's name as a password reminder. This appears as a "Help! I Forgot My Password" link on the login box.

However, there are two problems with forgetting your password. First, when entering either your mother's maiden name or your pet's name, this entry is not encrypted. Therefore, anyone seeing your password reminder could later login to the password reminder page. There they will be assigned a new password to your account, without your knowledge. Also, you are not actually reminded of your password. Instead your password will be changed to a numerical string of eight numbers, which becomes your new password. Your password can be changed back easily once logged into Cubby. As soon as you are in Cubby, you will see the following screen:

From this screen, you can run a normal search session or return to the PubMed front page by clicking on a database name on the top black bar. You are not limited to only searching PubMed, which is the default database. You may also search the Protein, Nucleotide, Structure, Genome, Pop Set, Taxonomy, or OMIM databases. A sample search is below.

To store this search, click on Cubby in the blue sidebar. Once back in Cubby, you will be prompted to store the search. If you stay in Cubby to search, you will be automatically prompted to save your search. It is also a good idea to rename your search because the default for naming your search is you entire search string. One problem with a stored search is that it can only consist of a one-line search string. The search string, however, can be as long as you need. Multiple line searches cannot be saved. However, multiple limits are allowed.

Once a search or a number of searches are saved, the searches can be run again in one of two ways:

• The first method is to run the entire search again to retrieve all citations available for you search term at the time you repeat the search.
• The second method is to retrieve an update since the last time you ran the search.

• To run a comprehensive search, click on search name, which is a blue underlined link. This will rerun the stored search in the database it was originally saved.
• To run an update search, check the box(es) next to the desired search strategy. Then click on the left gray box below the saved searches, "What's New for Selected". You then will retrieve citations indexed since your last search, if any are available. Cubby will also inform you of the date and time that you had last run your search. Just be careful not to click on the right box, "Delete Selected Searches". You will then accidentally delete a saved search, without be prompted to verify that you wish to delete your search strategy.

• PubMed