Melvyl® Union Catalog and Database Transitions

April 26, 2001 Author: CDLCategories:

Standard PubMed is currently available for searching from the National Library of Medicine [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/].

MEDLINE/PubMed Background

UC health sciences librarians were aware that many UC faculty and graduate students were using the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) PubMed system. PubMed offers a number of special features that are not available in MEDLINE/Health STAR (e.g., links to databases of proteins, genomes, structures, and nucleotides; access to the most recent citations (PREMEDLINE); the ability to find “related articles” with a click of a button). PubMed also remains freely available to students once they graduate.

The UC health sciences librarians felt that these factors were sufficient to demand a more thorough study of the feasibility/desirability of migrating from the CDL-hosted MEDLINE/HealthSTAR to PubMed. In addition, extensive changes by NLM to the MEDLINE format meant that CDL would have to completely rewrite all programs to be able to continue to load the database. The results of their analysis confirmed the desirability of moving to PubMed.

A task force, chaired by Resource Liaison Janice Contini (UCLA), was appointed to work with CDL, NLM, and the campuses to provide enhancements to UC users. For more information on this aspect, see [http://www.cdlib.org/inside/instruct/medlinechanges.rtf]

c. CDL-Hosted Databases Test Accounts Reminder

Test accounts for potential vendor replacements for the CDL-hosted Databases are now available [http://www.cdlib.org/about/test-accounts.html].

We would appreciate if you could take the time to review the databases in your area of interest and give us feedback through the online survey that we have created.

We also do encourage library staff to get feedback from faculty and students through targeted efforts. NOTE: The test accounts can be complex so faculty and students might need to be walked through the process, especially in the cases where there are complex URLs and passwords

Comments received by May 4, 2001 will be the most useful; the A&I Transition Steering Committee (TSC) will be meeting May 7 to begin to formulate their recommendations based on a variety of input, including the survey results.

Some tests will go beyond the May 4 deadline, for a list of expiration dates, see [http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/protected/accounts.html.