Hi Elhill Veterans!
I think the last suggestion is a good one. Why to invest money (our money)
making changes and improvements in PubMed/Entrez software which was never
designed for searching? Why not to use one of the existing search engines?
ISI did it and as far as I know, is not planning to spend money for major
improvements in their old software, adopted OVID instead.
IGM was  great with Elhill software, you could use Elhill commands, but we
lost this option when IGM was transferred to the PubMed software.
Is text word searching really the same as mapping? Can mapping replace
text word searching? I don't think so!
Well, Elhill Veterans & Lovers,  we are disappearing species.
As I was told, the new generation of librarians will be learning about
PuBMed and using PubMed, and will be very happy with the parking lot!
Never heard about paradise! :-)
teal, I love it!
No, I am not against PubMed, some of the features are great, and free
access is not bad, but the search engine is poor and far away from what
professional searchers need.
Have a great weekend everybody!
Vislava

 On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Marix, Mary wrote:

>
> Several librarians were having this discussion at an Outreach Contacts meeting in
> Houston a couple of weeks ago.  One of the suggestions that was made, and that
> several people liked, was for NLM to continue doing the excellent job they do with
> the indexing but to stop providing the search engines.
>
> There are several great interfaces for searching MEDLINE (I am thinking of Ovid &
> SilverPlatter) already on the market.  Surely the money that is being invested in
> providing the two competing systems, PubMed & IGM, (which most librarians trained as
> searchers don't like) could be more productively used in an arrangement with one (or
> both) of these companies.
>
> NLM finally saw the light and has gone with a commercial integrated system (Endeavor
> Voyager).  Why not do something similar with MEDLINE and the other databases that
> they create?
>
> Mary L. Marix, M.L.S., AHIP ([log in to unmask])
>
> "Burdick, Amrita J." wrote:
>
> > I am really concerned about the loss of access points which will happen with the
> > switchover to the web-based version of searching.  While PubMed has some
> > advanced options, many databases -- such as AIDSLINE are available only through
> > Internet Grateful Med.  Are we really going to lose the capability of searching
> > many fields (such as chemical registry number, textwords with adjacency, author
> > institutional affiliation, etc.)  that have been helpful in complex searches?  I
> > contacted MEDLARS who told me to just enter textwords as MeSH headings which is
> > an automatic mapping.  The method they suggested for institutional affiliation
> > simply didn't work. I haven't explored all the other fields and which ones work
> > and which ones won't but it doesn't look good.
> >
> > I don't mind learning new forms of access (as long as they work efficiently) but
> > I am reluctant to lose the complex searching capabilities of Elhill!!!
> >
> > Amrita Burdick, Clinical Medical Librarian
> > UMKC Health Sciences Library
> > 2411 Holmes St.
> > Kansas City, MO  64108-2792
> > [log in to unmask]
> > (816) 235-1876
>