UX Caucus Database Tips

The Gist: Candidate terms can uncover relevant articles not retrieved using title, abstract, or keywords. The difference between word indexed and phrase indexed fields is really important, not just with candidate term fields, but with ALL fields.  In EMBASE, on Ovid, my favored fields are TI (title) , AB (abstract), KF (keyword heading word) and DQ (candidate term word). If you are curious about the KF field, Kate wrote about why you might use it rather than KW in Tip #4 . That keystroke heard around the world on the day Kate's blog dropped was the sound of searchers changing KW to KF.  Today's post, however, is about candidate terms, which Ovid defines as new concepts proposed during indexing and judged to be useful additions to Emtree (EMBASE's thesaurus). Over 100,000 candidate terms are proposed each year!  In addition to having their own fields (DJ & DQ), candidate terms are indexed in SH (EMBASE subject headings) and HW (heading word) fields. Since HW is one of ...

Many thanks to Molly K. Maloney, Pharmacy Liaison Librarian, University at Buffalo, mkm9@buffalo.edu, and Marijane White, Data and Research Engagement Librarian, Oregon Health & Science University, whimar@ohsu.edu for this week’s tip. Molly and Marijane would like to acknowledge and thank Barbara S. Reich, Director, Medical Library, Hackensack University Medical Center, barbara.reich@hmhn.org, Paije Wilson, Health Sciences Librarian, University of Wisconsin-Madison, paije.wilson@wisc.edu, and Michelle L. Zafron, Associate Librarian, University at Buffalo, mlzafron@buffalo.edu for their contributions to this conversation. In a recent post on the Expert Searching mailing list, Molly asked, "In helping a student craft a search that includes a MeSH term with subheading, I realized I was assuming the subheading carry over to the child terms when exploded. As an example, if searching for "Mental Disorders/pathology"[Mesh] will you also get "Anxiety Disorders/pathology...