Publications and Bibliographies

Reviewed by James D. Haug, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, August 1996.

MEDLINE via Ovid, Version 3.0. 1996. Ovid Technologies, 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, 800-950-2035. Ovid bibliographic database search software--one of several interfaces with the MEDLINE database--serves Windows, DOS, and UNIX platforms, and is available for standalone usage with CD-ROMs, as well as for multiple usage on LANs employing either CD- ROM or magnetic media. Ovid provides the database in full (1966 - present) or in two-, four-, and five-year segments. Subscription fees depend upon mode of access (standalone or networked), number of simultaneous users, and temporal coverage.

Introduction:

Physical and medical anthropologists often seek journal articles on human biology and health care: topics exhaustively covered by the several bibliograpcovered by the several bibliographic databases that focus on the health sciences. When judged by several criteria--breadth of coverage, potential relevance to anthropological research, and widespread availability--one database stands out: MEDLINE, the best known and most often used bibliographic database in the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS). MEDLINE (MEDlars onLINE) concentrates on medical science but encompasses dentistry, nursing, and, in fact, much of human biology.

Largely because of its breadth, MEDLINE offers a rich bibliographic source to physical and medical anthropologists. And, with the development of CD-ROM systems, searches of MEDLINE have become easy and widely available. Of the several currently available CD-ROM- based interfaces with MEDLINE, the most popular are Ovid 3.0 and Silverplatter's SPIRS and WinSPIRs. The reviewer used Ovid 3.0 for Windows.

User Instruction:

Thesaurus: A principal strength of MEDLINE is its controlled vocabulary: MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). MeSH increases the specificity (precision) of searches of the database. The appropriate printed thesaurus is Medical Subject Headings, Annotated Alphabetic List (Springfield, VA: NTIS. Annual). Known simply as Annotated MeSH, its entries include, besides MeSH descriptors, indexing annotations, online notes, and topical subheadin and topical subheadings. Annotated MeSH contains nearly 17,000 MeSH terms, some of which are annually added, modified, or deleted. Annotated MeSH also provides lists of publication types and permissible topical subheadings.

Two auxiliary indexes enhance usage of Annotated MeSH by leading the searcher to appropriate MeSH headings: Permuted Medical Subject Headings and Medical Subject Headings, Tree Structures (Springfield, VA: NTIS. Annual). Permuted MeSH alphabetically lists each significant term in a subject heading and uses See references to direct one to the desired MeSH term. MeSH Tree Structures uses hierarchical classification to point the user to broader or narrower MeSH terms.

Ovid 3.0 enables an end-user to bypass, but not ignore, Annotated MeSH. It does so by automatically mapping a search term to a brief list of semantically related MeSH descriptors. From this list, one can then choose a MeSH term for a search. To guide the searcher to the appropriate heading, Ovid's mapping screen displays a scope note defining the term on which the cursor rests. For example, "African Americans" maps to "Blacks," but the scope note indicates that genetics of African Americans should be searched under "Negroid Race." Ovid usually maps terms to appropriate--sometimes broad but often specific--MeSH descriptors. Thus it maps "cladist it maps "cladistic analysis" to the broad descriptor, "phylogeny," but impressively, maps "binges" to the narrow MeSH term "alcohol drinking." When Ovid finds no matching MeSH descriptor it normally informs the user that it cannot map the entered term. Occasionally, though, it errs and maps to wholly inappropriate descriptors. "Allometry," for instance, enigmatically maps to "muscles." Out of a sample of 900 keywords from 242 articles published between 1990-94 in six different anthropological journals/yearbooks , 42% mapped to accurate, specific MeSH terms, 20% to broad terms, and 4% to narrower or related headings. The remaining 34% were either unmappable or mapped inaccurately. In any event, when one finds none of the displayed MeSH terms to be suitable, the system allows one to do a text word search. Generally speaking, mapping works well and is the most impressive feature of Ovid.

Printed User Guides: Various published sources describe and explain the MEDLINE database. The introductory material in Annotated MeSH is informative but not elementary. Ovid Technologies furnishes the Ovid Reference Manual and Ovid System Administrator Manual. The Reference Manual contains a "User Guide." In addition, a user can obtain documentation for Ovid software from Ovid Technologies' World Wide Web server. Especially useful isEspecially useful is the Ovid Windows Starter Kit, an abstracted version of the printed manual. The examples shown in the Kit represent searches of Ovid MEDLINE. (One can get this document from http://www.ovid.com/dochome/startkit/windows/winstart.htm).

User Assistance (On-screen): The layout of the screens in Ovid for Windows is instructive and simple. Screen titles, button labels, and on-screen directions are readable and unambiguous. On-screen help is abundant and easy to find. One can get help by clicking on a Help button or by pressing the F1 function key. The main search screen features a pull-down menu that includes a hypertext index of help screens, keyboard help, screen pictures, and a tutorial.

Scope and Coverage

An enormous database, MEDLINE contains nearly 8.4 million records dating from the present back to 1966. Every month the National Library of Medicine adds 32,000 new citations. The full Ovid MEDLINE database comprises five parts, each of which a user must search separately: 1966-75, 1976-79, 1980-85, 1986-91, and 1992-present. The NLM frequently updates MEDLINE: weekly, January through October; monthly in November and December. Ovid Technologies, however, updates MEDLINE on CD-ROM once a month, thus making it lag somewhat behind NLM MEDLINE. For most anthropolog For most anthropological research this lag should not be detrimental.

MEDLINE includes all the citations appearing in the printed Index Medicus, besides many of the citations published in the printed Index to Dental Literature and the International Nursing Index. MEDLINE extensively covers journals, but contains few records of monographs. By estimate , more than 90% of the records in MEDLINE represent journal articles. The NLM regularly indexes nearly 3,700 journals for the database. To find out whether or not a particular journal is indexed for MEDLINE, one can either consult List of Serials Indexed for Online Users (Springfield, VA: NTIS. Annual), or, if one is using Ovid, display a list of titles by selecting an index of journal names.

Though MEDLINE indexes articles published in sixty-seven languages, most of the articles included in the database are originally written in English, and about 70sh, and about 70% of the records in the current file contain an English abstract. Ovid 3.0 enables the searcher to limit articles to a selected language.

Anthropologists who conduct research in human biology or medicine should expect to find relevant journal articles through MEDLINE. MEDLINE covers somewhat more than half (52%) of the 1100 currently published titles cited in articles appearing in the previously mentioned sample of anthropological journals/yearbooks. More importantly, MEDLINE indexes 36 (65%) of the 55 most frequently cited titles in this sample, including American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, Folia Primatologica, Human Biology, Molecular Biology and Evolution, and Social Science and Medicine. On the other hand, NLM has, since its inception in 1966, consistently neglected other often cited anthropological journals and serials. A notable example is Medical Anthropology Quarterly, with only 23 records (all from 1995) for 1992 - May, 1996, despite publication since 1970. Worse still, from an anthropologist's viewpoint, MEDLINE does not cover American Anthropologist, Annual Review of Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Ethnology, Human Ecology, Journal of Human Evolution, Man, Primates, or Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. Moreover, out of the 39 anthropological journals listed in Katz' Magazines for Libraries (8th ed., New Pr (8th ed., New Providence, NJ: Bowker) only 5 are indexed in MEDLINE. In sum, MEDLINE covers many of the journals cited by physical and medical anthropologists, but few of those used by other anthropologists.

The geographical scope of MEDLINE is international. MeSH includes terms for continents, some subcontinental regions (e.g., Africa, Central), nations, states, and selected cities, but none for supercontinental regions (e.g., New World). Anyway, MEDLINE indexes only a small percentage of records--perhaps no more than 12%--with a geographic descriptor.

MeSH lacks descriptors for many ethnic units. For example, MeSH does not include "Navajo" or "Hopi." Neither does MeSH contain a term comprehending all Native Americans, both North American and South American. To find articles on all American Indians (or Native Americans) one must search for "Indians, North American," "Indians, South American," and "Indians, Central American." At the same time, it includes the ambiguous, if not archaic, term, "Negroid Race."

Record Structure and Search Software

Record Structure: Records in the MEDLINE database consist of bibliographic information and, in more than 50% of the cases, abstracts. Searchable fields in Ovid 3.0 include, among others, unique identifier, author, institution, title, journal name, MeSH subject henal name, MeSH subject heading, abstract, personal name as subject, publication type, ISSN, year of publication, and text word.

Limiting and Expanding: Ovid enables users to limit a search, but it also allows them to quickly broaden a search through MEDLINE's "explode" feature. One can limit a search either by entering Boolean operators into the command line or by selecting items from a series of menus. From menus one can choose a "Narrower Subject Heading," restrict the search to "focus" ("focus" being the MeSH descriptor the indexers consider to represent the dominant concept of the article), select one or more permissible subheadings (such as "Anatomy and Histology" or "Genetics"), or select from a menu of variables including "Human," "Animal," "Male," "Female," "Age Groups," and "Publication Types." Exploding a MeSH descriptor nets not only the records for a major descriptor, but also those for all its subordinate terms.

Search Software: Ovid 3.0 allows users to alternate between two modes of searching without leaving the main search screen: first, by using menus and dialog boxes, as well as by browsing and selecting from indexes; and, secondly, by entering commands. Searching by command permits entering search terms with truncation and wild cards, set numbers, Boolean operatumbers, Boolean operators, and abbreviated field names. After one has completed a search and posted the search to the main screen, one can either immediately view the records, or further restrict the search by limiting, before saving or printing the results. Ovid also allows one to save or print one's search strategy.

Comparisons with Related Databases

Two related bibliographic databases that physical and medical anthropologists might consider are CINAHL and BIOSIS. CINAHL, whose printed version is Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, only sparsely covers anthropologically related journals. BIOSIS, corresponding to Biological Abstracts, is a fruitful source of citations to articles on animal behavior, ecology, evolution, and taxonomy, subjects not well covered by MEDLINE. Available both online and on CD-ROM, BIOSIS indexes more journals/yearbooks often cited by physical anthropologists than does MEDLINE.

Summary of Positive Aspects

Though MEDLINE was designed for medicine and not for anthropology, its exhaustive, timely coverage of journals concerned with health and human biology makes it very useful to physical and medical anthropologists. The difficulties associated with accessing the database online, which usually required mediated searching, have been overcome by development of user-friendly local CD-ROM-based interfaces. For end-users, Ovid 3s. For end-users, Ovid 3.0 for Windows further enhances ease of searching MEDLINE by making several remarkable features available: contextual help, ease of movement between menus and commands, mapping of entered terms to MeSH descriptors, exploding, narrowing search to focus, and limitation of a search by subheadings and several other fields. Being able to search for text words gives users considerable flexibility when searching for subjects that have no suitable MeSH descriptor. All these features should encourage anthropologists to use MEDLINE.

Recommendations for Improvement

Given the primary audience and purpose of MEDLINE, recommending massive expansion of coverage of anthropological subjects would appear pretentious. But while anthropologists should not expect the National Library of Medicine to index archaeological journals, they might reasonably expect it to include titles such as Annual Review of Anthropology and Current Anthropology. Then too, any researcher who seeks appropriate MeSH descriptors for ethnic groups and geographical locations would appreciate an increase in the number and specificity of these kinds of descriptors.

References Cited

1. American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1994), Yearbook of Physical Anthropology (1994), Annual Review of Anthropology (1990-91, 1993-94), Medical Anthropology(1994), Medical Anthropology Quarterly (1994), and Social Science & Medicine (1991, 1994).

2. Pratt, Gregory F. "A Brief Hitchhiker's Guide to Medline." Database 17 (February 1994): 41-46.

3. Pratt, op. cit., p. 44.