Dear Medlibbers,

The Reference Librarians at my library have been reviewing the proposed
changes to subheadings.  In general, we are dismayed by the proposal and
are preparing a response to share with NLM.  NLM says they are trying to
tweak the system to make it easier for the infrequent and/or untrained
searcher.  However, in our experience, the infrequent/untrained searcher
does not use subheadings anyway.  If anything having more, specific
subheadings would make more sense to end users (why would anyone think
that deficiency is covered by the etiology subheading?!).  We also find
some parts of the proposal unclear and are curious about how other
librarians are interpreting the proposal.

 
Our specific questions:
1.  Looking at the Revised MeSH Qualifier Concepts and Hierarchy:  It
states, "italics = qualifier retained as subordinate concept (entry
term)"  Does this mean the term will still be available singly?  For
example, poisoning and toxicity are indented in italics under adverse
effects.  If I am only interested in aspirin poisoning, will I still be
able to search aspirin/po?  Does this mean that if I am interested in
the adverse effects of aspirin that selecting the adverse effects
subheading will automatically select the poisoning and toxicity
subheadings, too (an "explode" for subheadings, if you will).

2.  What happens to articles indexed under the "old" subheading scheme?
What about searches (esp. saved searches)?  For example, deficiency is
one of the proposed deletions and it will be replaced with etiology.
What happens to articles already indexed under zinc/df?  Will their
records be changed?  If I search zinc/df will I get articles indexed
prior to the change?  Will searches of zinc/et now pull articles indexed
as zinc/df?

3.  What exactly are the indexers going to be instructed to do?

4.  What does this sentence mean?  "Since all access points are
preserved via entry vocabulary, searchers will be able to continue to
use the terminology with which they are familiar."

Here are links from Cindy Schmidt at the McGoogan Library of Medicine in
Nebraska for your reference.
http://www.unmc.edu/library/mcmla/Subheading_announcement.doc and
http://www.unmc.edu/library/mcmla/Revised_Qualifer_Lists.doc

I am looking forward to the discussion of NLM's proposal.
Julie M. Trumble
Head of Reference and Educational Services
Moody Medical Library
The University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, Texas 77555-1035
409-772-3642
409-762-5586 (fax)
jtrumble@...