OLDMEDLINE (1950-1965)

Database Description
Fields in This Database: Author · Titles · Subjects · Volume and Date · Codes
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Database Description: OLDMEDLINE contains citations to articles from international biomedical journals covering the fields of medicine, preclinical sciences, and allied health sciences from 1950 through 1965. The citations were originally printed in hardcopy indexes.

OLDMEDLINE contains only journal article citations. No abstracts are available.

OLDMEDLINE citations lack the accumulated changes and improvements that have been made to data in other NLM files during annual file maintenance. Certain fields may contain outdated or erroneous data and the data are not cosmetically consistent from year to year (e.g., the use of upper/lower case). The data basically reflect the contents of the original printed indexes that were produced under the policies and procedures of the time. The one exception to this is that NLM has identified and updated the journal source information.

For MEDLINE citations since 1966, see MEDLINE. The National Library of Medicine's catalog of books, audiovisuals, and journal titles (not journal articles) is LOCATORPlus.

PRODUCED BY: National Library of Medicine.
DATES COVERED: 1950-1965.
UPDATES (corrections): Quarterly.

Fields in This Database

AUTHOR

AUTHOR (.AU.): Author surname and initials; initials are separated by a space.

TITLES

TITLE (.TI.): Title of article. TI always contains an English-language title. For articles published in other languages, TI contains the title translated into English and enclosed in square brackets. Some OLDMEDLINE records have "Not Available" in the article title because they lack English language translations.

ORIGINAL TITLE (.OT.): Original title of article not published in English.

JOURNAL TITLE (.JN.): Name of journal, spelled out in full, in which the article was published.

JOURNAL ABBREVIATION (.JA.): The standard abbreviation for the journal title. This is the same abbreviation used in Index Medicus and other NLM publications and databases.

SUBJECTS

SUBJECTS (.SU.): OLDMEDLINE contains the original Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) assigned at the time the records were first established prior to 1966. OLDMEDLINE citations were generally assigned fewer subject headings (approximately two to six per citation). The original MeSH and subheadings assigned to the citations have not been updated, and may not match current MeSH vocabulary. Therefore, do not use the current MeSH list to search these subjects.

SU contains both main headings and subheadings. Subheadings are terms that cover general, frequently discussed aspects of a subject, such as "diagnosis." In OLDMEDLINE, subheadings vary from year to year, and some citations have no subheadings. Terminology and application may not match current usage.

Using SU, you may search either complete subject phrases or individual subject keywords. For example:

pneumonia.su. finds:

PNEUMONIA
PNEUMONIA/in infant and child
PNEUMONIA, LOBAR
PNEUMONIA, PRIMARY ATYPICAL/therapy
PNEUMONIA, VIRAL

To search a main heading in combination with a subheading, use the "with" operator. For example:

(lupus with therapy).su. finds:

LUPUS/therapy
LUPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS/therapy
LUPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS, DISCOID/therapy

PERSON AS SUBJECT (.PS.): Name of person discussed in the article.

VOLUME and DATE

YEAR (.YR.): Year of publication of the issue.

VOLUME (.VO.): Volume of the journal in which the article was published. Some citations lack volume number, so if you cannot find a particular volume of a journal, please retry your search without the volume number or with year instead.

PUBLICATION DATE (.PD.): Date of the journal issue in which the article was published. PD contains year, month or season, and day, if applicable.

ARTICLE PAGINATION (.PG.): If you have the starting page of an article but not the full citation, searching with PG might be useful. Enter the starting page and the truncation symbol $.

CODES

ISSN (.IS.): The International Standard Serial Number of the journal.

LANGUAGE (.LA.): A 3-character code identifying the language of the article. Some OLDMEDLINE records in foreign languages have "und" rather than the actual language, so use this search with some caution. For a complete list of codes, see MARC Code List for Languages from the Library of Congress. Common codes:

eng — English
fre — French
ger — German
ita — Italian
rus — Russian
spa — Spanish
und — Non-English, not specified

PUBMED UNIQUE ID (.PMID.): Record control number assigned for NLM's PUBMED system; unique to each record in the database. Searching by PMID is a method for returning directly to a record that you have retrieved previously.

CITATION SUBSET (.SB.): A code that indicates whether the journal is from any of the following categories of journals or specialized topics.

D — citations from non-Index Medicus journals in the field of dentistry; these citations appeared in Index to Dental Literature.
N — citations from non-Index Medicus journals in the field of nursing; these citations appeared in the International Nursing Index.
OIM — Old MEDLINE (all records carry this code, so not useful for searching).

March 2006

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