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Now let's look at how to search TOXLINE.
I am on the main TOXNET page at
toxnet.nih.nlm.gov.
I'm going to click on TOXLINE on the left hand menu.
Note that now my search
is only in TOXLINE. I'm interested in asbestos,
since for twenty years I worked in an office with us asbestos in the ceiling!
So I'm going to go ahead and type "asbestos,"
and then I'm going to click Search. Notice that I get quite a few results.
The results are in relevancy order, but I can change the sort order if I wanted to,
with the sort button on the left hand side. But I'm not going to do that right
now.
If I scroll down, I can see the various components like
"RISKLINE," and then if I scroll further down,
I start to see some PubMed citations. If I click the PubMed citation link,
it will take me over to PubMed and to that particular citation
within PubMed. Returning to TOXLINE,
if I click on one of the records, you can see that I get information about the
author, the source,
I get a long abstract here - I get all of the keywords for this record,
the CAS registry number, the language,
and some other information. I can click on the search results button
to return to the list of results. To find out what synonyms TOXLINE used,
I'm going to click the Details button.
Notice that TOXLINE searched on synonyms
for asbestos, and on the CAS registry number.
I could have also searched this number in the first place if I had it handy.
So let's close that box away.
Now let's see what would happen if I eliminate the PubMed results.
So right here it says include PubMed records -
I'm going to go ahead and click to "no" and then I'm going to redo the search.
Now you can see that I do in fact
get a smaller number. So perhaps I want to limit this to more recent
information. Clicking on the limits button, I can see my choices for limits here.
I can add chemical synonyms and CAS
numbers to search yes or no, include PubMed records, yes or no - I'm going to make
that no.
I can control the search fields - I'll leave that it all.
I can control the type of search - I'll leave that as is.
The maximum number of records returned and then the year of publication which
I'm going to change to 2000. Notice that I have a list of the TOXLINE
components,
which for now I will leave at all, and also the
language which I will leave at all. So I can go ahead and search with my limits,
and in fact I do get a much smaller
set of citations. So I'm going to go ahead and return to the basic search
screen by clicking the button on the left hand side.
Probably I do want to do more focused search,
so say I wanted to find out about asbestos and asthma. space to spend Asma
I can use Boolean operators, so I'm going to go ahead and do that -
asbestos AND asthma - and then I'm going to click
search. Again looking at the details,
I can see how my search was mapped. I can do other kinds of more specific
searching
I could truncate words with the asterisk. I can put in a phrase search
in quotes, but if I do this it's going to turn off the automatic term mapping,
and I will find only that exact phrase. So before you use truncation or phrases
in quotes,
check your search in the details box to make sure that you're not losing
other synonyms pulled in by TOXLINE. You can import your results
into reference management systems that include a TOXLINE filter,
such as EndNote and Reference Manager. To do this,
select the results that you want - I'll just select the first two here -
and then click to saved checked items box on left hand side.
Two items were saved, and then go ahead and click the download button
on the left hand side. If you were to click this link out, "How do I import
citations into my reference management program?",
it would give you instructions. But I know that what I need to do
is selected the "tagged" format, and then click download
and save the file with the dot txt extension.
Let's go ahead and close the download box away,
and then return to the basic search screen.
If I'm not sure what terms are contained in TOXLINE, I can also browse the
index
so clicking the Browse the Index button,
I'm going to search for "neoplasm,"
and then click Search and this will give all of the words starting with
neoplasm.
I can select the terms that I might want, like neoplasm, and perhaps
neoplasms, and then go ahead and click the Select button,
and of course because this is neoplasm I will get quite a few
results here. Let's take a moment to find out more about the TOXLINE components.
Click on the Help button on the left hand side,
and you will come to a nice help page. This page gives lots of useful information,
but for right now let's just click on the TOXLINE components link.
Notice the list of components, and also noticed their dates of coverage.
You can see why TOXLINE is very good for finding historical
information.
So now it's your turn! Return to Moodle and go through the "Guide on the Side"
tutorial to try all of this
out, and then work through the discovery exercises.