LIBR 534 Module II (BIOMEDICAL DATABASES) Class #7Intermediate level skill building

• More Medline & Embase (scope, bias, interfaces)

• CINAHL on Ebsco (nursing & allied health)

~ Break 7pm & 8pm

• Search examples & practice

• Hjørland article discussion• Someone to present short overview

• Assignments due Oct 28, Nov 4Various activities, interactions in class…

October 21st, 2015

Dean Giustini, UBC biomed librarian

MEDLINE & EMBASE

What are some of the features of these two biomedical databases?

When would you use them?

Do we need both?

Medline – MeSH tree structures

Each of the 16 trees is assigned a letter as an identifier

A. Anatomy B. Organisms C. Diseases D. Chemical and Drugs E. Analytical, Diagnostic & Therapeutic Techniques, & Equipment F. Psychiatry and Psychology G. Phenomena and ProcessesH. Disciplines and Occupations I. Anthropology, Education, Sociology and Social Phenomena J. Technology, Industry, Agriculture K. Humanities L. Information Science M. Named Groups N. Health Care O. Publication Characteristics P. Geographic Locations

EMTREE headings – 15 branches or ‘facets’

http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/embase

EMBASE’s preferred terms organized into a (poly)hierarchical structure

15 branches called facets:

A Anatomical conceptsB Organism namesC Physical diseases, disorders and abnormalitiesD Chemicals and drugsE Analytical, diagnostic and therapeutic techniques, equipment and parametersF Psychological and psychiatric phenomenaG Biological phenomena and functionsH Chemical, physical and mathematical phenomenaI Society and environmentJ Types of article or studyK Geographic namesL Groups by age and sexM Named groups of personsN Health care conceptsQ Biomedical disciplines, science and art

What do MeSH and EMTREE have in common?

• Both are comprehensive biomedical / life science vocabularies• Similar faceted structure (Emtree modeled on MeSH in 1988)• Both thesauri have broader/narrower terms & use explode/focus• Both have unique elements, levels of detail and subject focus

In the NLM Classification books on ‘pre-clinical’ topics are filed in…..

Medline & Embase – Key facts

Embase• Biomedical database produced by Elsevier• Comprehensive coverage of biomedicine, drugs & pharmacology• Indexed with 60,000 EMTREE terms, 27,000 drug & chemical names• ~22 million records from 1974 - present; indexes 7500 journals• Overlap with Medline ca. 60% (at journal level)• Unique records especially drug titles + European + psychiatric literature

Medline• Biomedical database produced by NLM (U.S. National Library of Medicine)• Focus on biomedicine incl. nursing, dentistry and veterinary science• Indexed with MeSH with over 27,450 terms• 25 million records from 1940s-present (Old Medline)• 5,700 journals; overlap with Embase ca. 50-60% (at broad “journal level”)• Unique records especially in US titles + nursing literature etc.

In searching – why choose Embase?

• Emtree drug terminology is:• More extensive with extensive synonyms (including trade

names)• Route of administration subheadings/qualifiers

• Organized in detailed tree structures in polyhierarchy of drug terms• Structured from multiple points of view and use• Best for identifying and searching for new drugs• Emtree includes all MeSH which are linked to EMTREE headings• Usually Embase is used in conjunction with other databases

CINAHL reflects nursing & allied health literature

CINAHL = Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health lit

Indexes ~1200 English language journals, 1981 to present

Updated every 2nd month

~70% of CINAHL headings adopted from MeSH

About 55% unique content specifically for nursing/ allied health

Note in a record how different limits are in CINAHL

Medline, Embase & Cinahl • Three-way comparison• How do health librarians recommend one over another?

• Context is important – what is the clinical question? • Who is asking?

• Health librarians need to know coverage fully• Strengths, weaknesses of each database

• Nothing wrong with checking all three places• Both Medline & Embase citations are searchable on the web

• A lot of Cinahl’s content not searchable on the web

Dean Giustini, UBC biomed librarian