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New On-Demand Class: Topic Searching in PubMed: Using the Medical Subject Headings (MESH®)

New On-Demand Class: Topic Searching in PubMed: Using the Medical Subject Headings (MESH®). NLM Tech Bull. 2023 Mar-Apr;(451):b8.

April 06, 2023 [posted]

Learn how to use the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for expert PubMed searching in this hands-on, self-paced course.

PubMed maps your search terms to MeSH, the vocabulary the National Library of Medicine (NLM) uses to describe articles, to improve your search with additional terms. Designed for librarians and other expert literature searchers in the health sciences, this course will help you better understand how PubMed uses MeSH and how you can take control of your PubMed topic searches for better precision or recall.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

  1. Recognize that MeSH is automatically included in PubMed searches and demonstrate how it improves your search results.
  2. Identify when you need to go beyond the automated features of PubMed in your topic searches (and when you do not).
  3. Document PubMed searches for formal queries.
  4. Explore MeSH and build PubMed searches using the MeSH Database.
  5. Accommodate unindexed records for comprehensive PubMed searches.
  6. Apply distinct techniques for special PubMed searches.

This self-paced course provides 2 hours of Medical Library Association continuing education credit (MLA CE).

For MLA CE, register for this course via the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) at https://www.nnlm.gov/training/class-catalog/topic-searching-pubmed-using-medical-subject-headings.

The course is also available via the NLM website at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/oet/ed/pubmed/mesh/.