2. Ovid - Medline Sub Headings
Medline
Sub Headings (not to be confused with Subject Headings) are terms which refine and focus a
MeSH term. Effectively, they cut across the MeSH tree hierarchy, and are usually broad
concepts such as epidemiology, genetics, economics, drug therapy etc.
Ovid
automatically takes you to the Sub Heading page after you have selected your MeSH term.
Not all Sub Headings apply to all MeSH terms and it is helpful that the Ovid interface
displays only those Sub Headings that are relevant to your term.
You can select some or
all of the Sub Headings. At this stage, I would recommend that you select all (there is a
single box at the top that permits this), to increase the sensitivity of your search. If
you find too many citations, you can rework the search with selected Sub Headings only.
When you enter a term in the search box, ensure that the Map to Subject
Headings checkbox is selected as shown above. Ovid attempts to match your search string to
a MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) term, and automatically takes you to the Mapping Display
screen to show the matches.
Textword
searching
As already discussed,
Ovid performs a combined MeSH match and textword search for you using the Mapping Display
screen, provided that you select the .mp. option (see below), which looks
for a textword in titles, abstracts and subject headings.
If you
want to look for additional textwords, you will have to understand the appropriate syntax
to use. You must construct the search on the Main Search screen, disabling the 'Map to
Subject Heading' option. To improve your searches you should use wildcards and truncation
to compensate for spelling variations, and plurals.
| Wild Card |
Function |
| $ |
This is the stemming wild card which will find all words which start with
your search letters. e.g. physio$.ti = physiology physiotherapy, physiotherapist etc. in the title
field |
| # |
This is a mandatory single character wom#n = woman, women |
| ? |
This can indicate either 0 or 1 letters, often used to pick up American
and British English variants e.g. colo?r = color, colour |
Until you become more skilled in the use of Medline fields, I would
recommend using the search string "your search string".mp. typed into the Main
Search Box. e.g. "beta interferon".mp. Don't
forget that there is a full stop after the .mp. |
