It's been awhile since I posted my original note to
the list about changes to PubMed's Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) and I have to
say I've been surprised by the apparent lack of interest and the obvious lack
of conversation about it.


I’ve had just four replies:






One wrote to say they have been seeing "Schema: pubmed_option3" in their PubMed History and wondered what that was all about (I don’ t know)One said they’d been unaware that anything had
been changedOne suggested I report my findings to NLMAnd one emailed me to tell me that she’d been
developing a complex search strategy for a particular purpose and one day it
was fine and the next it retrieved all sorts of off-target results thanks to
the “new” ATM





It’s that last comment that explains my concerns about the
changes to the way PubMed processes a query. Previously, ATM was subject
focused. Now, it’s moving towards key-word searching. This is a big change. 




If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to: 






Do the sample search for lung cancer; see the
citation sensor at work; LOOK in the Details box to see what PubMed did with
your search.Think about the implications of increasing retrieval
– in the lung cancer search, that was nearly 30,000 citations.Read the NLM Technical Bulletin article on the
change: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj08/mj08_pubmed_atm_cite_sensor.html



 Let NLM know what you think about these changes. And let us
know, too.



 
Thanks!

Donna Berryman, MLISAssistant Director, Education & Information ServicesEdward G. Miner LibraryUniversity of Rochester Medical SchoolRochester, New York
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