LibGuides: BIO 1408: Plants and Human Affairs: Specialized Resources

Specialized Resources

What is the difference between PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC)?

PubMed is a biomedical literature database that contains abstracts of publications.
PubMed Central (PMC) is a full-text repository that contains the full-text of publications.

Publications that are archived in PubMed Central may be found when searching PubMed. In PubMed, the abstract of the publication is available and searchable. The same publication in PubMed Central contains the full-text article, and the full text is searchable.

See the National Library of Medicine Fact Sheet for further details on the differences.

*Note: MEDLINE database is a subset of the larger PubMed database. To search only MEDLINE please see the MEDLINE vs. MEDLINE Complete tab for more information.
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Please view the PubMed & PubMed Central tab to the left for more information

NCBI logo

The National Library of Medicine has established an online portal that assembles essential resources for scholars to conduct research in the biological sciences called the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

You can search for literature in databases such as PubMed and PubMed Central. You can search for genomes using tools like BLAST and SRA (Sequence Read Archive). You can also connect your My NCBI account to other accounts, such as ORCID or NSF, so that you can manage bibliogransfphies and create biosketches.

NCBI Training & Tutorials

NCBI C++ Toolkit Manual A comprehensive manual on the NCBI C++ toolkit, including its design and development framework, a C++ library reference, software examples and demos, FAQs and release notes. The manual is searchable online and can be downloaded as a series of PDF documents.
NCBI Education Page Provides links to tutorials and training materials, including PowerPoint slides and print handouts.
NCBI Glossary Part of the NCBI Handbook, this glossary contains descriptions of NCBI tools and acronyms, bioinformatics terms and data representation formats.
NCBI Handbook An extensive collection of articles about NCBI databases and software. Designed for a novice user, each article presents a general overview of the resource and its design, along with tips for searching and using available analysis tools. All articles can be searched online and downloaded in PDF format; the handbook can be accessed through the NCBI Bookshelf.
NCBI Help Manual Accessed through the NCBI Bookshelf, the Help Manual contains documentation for many NCBI resources, including PubMed, PubMed Central, the Entrez system, Gene, SNP and LinkOut. All chapters can be downloaded in PDF format.
NCBI Resources How-To Guides List of links to how-to guides for all NCBI resources.

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Please view the NCBI tab to the left for more information

AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access), a database produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAL), consists of two subsets of records.

The first contains citations for journal articles that include abstracts.
The second consists of bibliographic records describing monographs, serials, audiovisual materials and online content from around the world.

The database contains 5,200,000+ records and includes printed works from as far back as the 15th century.

AGRICOLA records describe publications and resources encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines, including animal and veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, farming and farming systems, agricultural economics, extension and education, food and human nutrition, and earth and environmental sciences.

AGRICOLA--- Government Version
Also known as SEARCH, this is the United States Department of Agriculture-- National Agricultural Library version. You can search everything from the National Agricultural Library or limit the search to only PubAg. It is not as flexible as the EBSCO version below, but you can still find articles or books.
AGRICOLA EBSCO version
Discover the world of agriculture and life science with AGRICOLA. The records describe publications and resources encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines including plant and animal sciences forestry entomology soil and water resources agricultural economics agricultural engineering agricultural products alternative farming practices and food and nutrition. Auxiliary subjects that support NAL's Information Center activities such as agricultural trade and marketing rural information and animal welfare are also included in the database. Coverage for AGRICOLA dates back to 1970.
National Agricultural Library
The National Agricultural Library (NAL) is one of five national libraries of the United States. It houses one of the world's largest collections devoted to agriculture and its related sciences.
National Agricultural Library Thesaurus (NALT)
Select controlled vocabulary terms for subject indexing for the National Agricultural Library.

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Please view the AGRICOLA tab to the left for more information

What is MeSH?

MeSH stands for Medical Subject Headings and is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity.

Why Use MeSH?

MeSH terms impose uniformity and consistency to the indexing of biomedical literature and are applied to citations when they are indexed for MEDLINE. This system offers three main advantages:

MeSH indexing facilitates the retrieval of relevant articles even when authors have used different words or spellings to describe the same topic.
- Lung cancer, lung tumor, lung neoplasm, and pulmonary cancer are all possible synonyms for the same topic. The MeSH term Lung Neoplasms covers all of the variations, saving you from having to type them all into your search.
MeSH indexing increases the discoverability of citations.
- If a citation has no abstract or otherwise does not effectively convey the topic(s) discussed in the article, MeSH indexing allows for discovery of this citation even by basic keyword searching.
MeSH indexing facilitates searching of both the broad and the narrow simultaneously due to the existence of the MeSH hierarchy.
- MeSH Headings, Subheadings and Publication Types are organized in hierarchies, or "MeSH trees".
  
  At the most general level of the hierarchy are very broad headings such as "Anatomy" or "Mental Disorders". More specific headings are found at narrower levels of the hierarchy, such as "Ankle" and "Conduct Disorder". A MeSH term can be part of one or more hierarchies.

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Please view the MeSH Subject Headings tab to the left for more information.

MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) premier bibliographic database that contains more than 31 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine.

MEDLINE is a primary component of PubMed, a literature database developed and maintained by the NLM National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). MEDLINE is the online counterpart to the MEDical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) that originated in 1964 (see MEDLINE history). A distinctive feature of MEDLINE is that the records are indexed with NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).

Selection process: The current procedure for adding new journals to MEDLINE is described on the page How to Include a Journal in MEDLINE.
Time coverage: MEDLINE includes literature published from 1966 to present, and selected coverage of literature prior to that period. For details about pre-1966 citations see OLDMEDLINE Data.
Source: Currently, citations from more than 5,200 worldwide journals in about 40 languages.
Updates: Citations are added to PubMed 7 days a week.

What is the difference between searching MEDLINE in PubMed, ProQuest, and/or EBSCO?

PubMed is a great interface for carrying out a basic scoping search - or if you wish to identify a limited number of key references.
MEDLINE through EBSCO has an easy-to-use interface that allows for a more comprehensive and systematic search and works easily with citation managers.
MEDLINE through ProQuest has excellent functionality for comprehensive and systematic search but is not as citation manager friendly as EBSCO.

MEDLINE Overview from the National Library of Medicine

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Please view the MEDLINE tab to the left for more information