The National Library of Medicine continues to push back the date boundaries on MEDLINE, converting more of the old paper-based records every year.

With its regular January update of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), MEDLINE also released its latest coverage data — MEDLINE now covers the medical literature from 1946 to present.

Users of both PubMed and OvidSP interfaces for MEDLINE will find the older records included in their searches automatically.   Of course, you can select to include or exclude publication years in both interfaces.

Also with this year’s update, OvidSP has added a new Pharmacological Action limit for advanced searchers.

Power searchers may be interested in the details of  MeSH Vocabulary Changes for 2012:

• About MeSH Changes
• Lists of Data Changed
  • New Descriptors – 2012
  • Changed Descriptors – 2012
  • Deleted Descriptors – 2012
  • New Descriptors by Tree Subcategory – 2012

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 at 1:54 pm and is filed under All News, Clinicians, Researchers, Students, Teaching Faculty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.