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The November-December 2008 issue of the NLM Technical Bulletin is now complete.

This article describes improvements made to My NCBI on December 10, 2008.

The Radiation Event Medical Management System (REMM) is available for download to mobile devices (Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm) with selected key files from the full online version.

The PDF and print versions of the List of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE (LJI) ceased with the 2008 edition. The data are available through the Journals database. Newly selected journals for indexing are announced on the Journals Recently Accepted by NLM for Inclusion in MEDLINE Web page. For information on how to search the Journals database for journals indexed in MEDLINE see the article: Journals Database: A Refresher and Introduction to New Features.

The NLM adopted the 2009 MeSH vocabulary for cataloging beginning on November 24, 2008.

UMLS Source Release Documentation The National Library of Medicine has published the first set of its new Source Release Documentation pages.

As of December 15, PubMed MEDLINE citations, translation tables, and the MeSH database were updated to reflect 2009 MeSH. Now that end-of-year activities are complete, MEDLINE/PubMed may be searched using 2009 MeSH vocabulary. See MEDLINE Data Changes - 2009. NLM Tech Bull. 2008 Nov-Dec;(365):e14. for details on data changes as well as links to other pertinent MEDLINE and MeSH-related articles from the sidebar on the right. On December 16, NLM resumed daily (Tuesday-Saturday) MEDLINE updates to PubMed (including the backlog of citations indexed since November 19 with 2009 MeSH).

RxNorm began issuing a weekly update release; effective in October 2008. This weekly release is only an addition to the most recent full release, which occurs monthly. The weekly update includes new information obtained through the FDA Structured Product Labels sent to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) DailyMed Web site, including NDCs (National Drug Codes) for existing products, or information about newly approved drugs, as well as appropriate RxNorm forms for new drugs. Other sources of information, such as suggestions from the Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services, product announcements, and other public information may also be used to create new forms and add attributes of clinical drug products. Weekly releases will, in general, include any information received by the preceding Friday.

NLM released a new version of the NLM Gateway on November 24, 2008, with redesigned interfaces for the E-mail and Download/Display functions. Each has a cleaner appearance, displays the list of items to be processed with the option to deselect items on the list, and includes links (Help me choose) to assist in selecting formatting options.

NLM is pleased to announce that RxTerms, a new interface terminology that links to RxNorm, is now available for download and testing.

A new sensor will soon join the Citation Sensor and Drug Sensor in PubMed Gene Sensor checks the query entered in the search box and if it detects the symbol for a gene found in the Gene database, a "Gene Information" box displays above the search results with links to organism-specific information and the full report in Gene (see Figure 1). As with the other Sensors, Gene Sensor will evolve over time and is being phased in, so all users will not see it initially.

The 2009 PubMed system will be brought up in mid-December. In addition to the new field, Create Date (see Create Date - New Field to Indicate When Records Added to PubMed), here are some additional notes of interest.

At this time each year the NLM Technical Bulletin traditionally includes information about changes made to MEDLINE during annual National Library of Medicine (NLM) maintenance known as Year-End Processing (YEP). This article collects, in one place, the notable data changes for 2009. Some topics may be linked to another article where details will be found. For information about how this maintenance affects the NLM schedule for adding indexed MEDLINE citations to PubMed, see the article, MEDLINE/PubMed Year-End Processing Activities.

The 2008AB release of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Knowledge Sources is available for download from the UMLS Knowledge Source Server (UMLSKS) as of November 17, 2008. The new UMLS Release includes:

The NLM PubMed training manual was recently updated to reflect the My NCBI redesign (as of September 25, 2008). Several My NCBI Quick Tours have also been updated and a new Quick Tour has been developed, Creating Your Bibliography. (See the article, Coming Soon to My NCBI: New Features, New Navigation, and My Bibliography). You may reach the Quick Tours from the PubMed Online Training page (from the Tutorials link on the PubMed homepage) and from the Distance Education Program Resources page.

A new date field, Create Date, will be implemented with all PubMed records when the 2009 system is available in mid-December 2008. Create Date is the date the record was added to the database. All records added to PubMed prior to implementation will receive a Create Date equal to Entrez Date (EDAT).

Please consult the 2009 online Introduction to MeSH for more details. Lists of new and changed vocabulary are available at these links:

Starting in July 2008 new search options were introduced in the Entrez Journals database. The new options are currently available either from the Preview/Index tab or directly in the search box. Some of these new search options have also been added to the Limits screen. In addition, the Full Display view has changed to include new fields.

PubMed search results (Summary format) have until now displayed the citation with the author names first, followed by the title of the article and the source data. Author names - no matter how many - served as the link to the AbstractPlus format. To improve the look of the Web page as well as to make it easier to scan titles, the positions of author names and the title of the article have been reversed. The article title now displays on top and serves as the link to the AbstractPlus format. Author names appear under the title and the rest of the citation remains the same.

PubMed Advanced Search will soon no longer be a beta site. It is now the place to go to use features such as field searching and limits. In the near future the tabs for Limits, Preview/Index, History, Clipboard, and Details will be removed from the basic PubMed pages. History, Limits, Index of Fields, and a link to Details are available from the Advanced Search screen. A link for the Clipboard appears to the right of the search box on the PubMed screen when the Clipboard has content.