The Basic Search

When you type something into the PubMed search bar, the system:

• Looks for Medical Subject Headings for each concept;
• Searches for both MeSH terms and text words (Boolean "OR");
• Searches for citations with all of your concepts (Boolean "AND").

(("huntington disease"[TIAB] NOT Medline[SB]) OR "huntington disease"[MeSH Terms] OR huntington's disease[Text Word])
AND
(("genes"[TIAB] NOT Medline[SB]) OR "genes"[MeSH Terms] OR gene[Text Word])

You can see what the system did by pressing the "Details" tab.

The results of your search are automatically displayed in "summary" format. To view the citation and abstract of an individual article, click on the authors’ names. Some of the viewing (display) options available to you are: 

• Summary – reference with PubMed ID number (PMID). The library uses the PMID when requesting articles for you from other libraries. You will also see icons that indicate:
      No Abstract
      Abstract available
      Full-text free in PubMed Central.
      Free full-text available
• Abstract – summary information with the abstract and author affiliation, if available. This is the display that comes up when you click on the authors’ names from the summary display.
• Citation – summary and abstract information with indexing terms, including MeSH headings
• Full-Text – available only if:
• there is a button to the journal site from the abstract, citation, or brief display OR if one of the LINKS from the result list includes a "LinkOut"
  
AND
• either the library has a subscription to the electronic version of the journal or the article is available for free to everyone 

When you identify an article that you may want to add to your list of references, you can click in its check box. Before you go on to the next page of results, select "Clipboard" from the "Send to" drop-down menu.  You can hold up to 500 items on the clipboard.

You can limit your results in several ways:

• Use the "limit" feature to restrict your search by: 
• specific fields (author, title, MeSH heading, etc.)
• publication types (review, practice guideline, editorial, etc.)
• age groups
• languages
• human or animal
• gender
• articles with abstracts
• dates
• subsets of journals (AIDS,AIM, Dental, Nursing, etc.)
• Use the Preview/Index feature to 
• view the steps in your search
• specify which indexes (fields) to search
• add additional terms to your search
• Use the MeSH Database to identify more specific topics.  You can click on the MeSH heading to 
• restrict the search to articles with a major focus on your topic
• prevent exploding of your MeSH term so that more narrow terms are not included
• identify subheadings

If you need to find more references, try to:

• Try the "Related Articles" link from a reference that you find useful
• Use the MeSH Database to identify broader topics 
• Think of different terms that you can use
• Make sure there are no limits in effect
• Use the "citation" display to see what additional MeSH terms are used in the results you did get. You may find more by searching under these terms.

When you are ready to print or save your list of references from your search or from the clipboard:

• Pick a format 
• Summary for a bibliography
• Abstract to include any abstracts
• Citation to include abstracts and MeSH headings
• MEDLINE if you are going to automatically load your results into a bibliographic utility program such as ProCite or Reference Manager
• Pick your display preference
• To view on the screen, press "Display."  Sometimes your printout from this display may be cut off on the right.  If this happens try printing plain text.
• To format for printing plain text, select in the "show" box how many items you want to display and then press "Text". You can then print using your browser’s print function.
• To save to your local computer, press "Save." Note that a number in the "show" box DOES NOT limit the number of references that are saved. The system will save only those that are checked off or, if none are checked, it will save all the references, up to 10,000 items.

Once you have the search results you want, you can save a search strategy to rerun on a regular basis. To do this:

1. Click on the Details button.
2. Click on URL
3. Bookmark the page.  Note: When you save the URL it is saved with the name "PubMed medline query."  Choose your bookmarks' edit function to rename it.