Page 137 - DLIS405_INFORMATION_STORAGE_AND_RETRIEVAL

Information Storage and Retrieval

Notes Specificity — Each article is indexed to the most specific MeSH terms available, e.g.
an article on acne is indexed under acne, but not under skin diseases.
Near Match — Articles with no exact match are indexed to the closest related MeSH
term, e.g. seminal vesiculitis to seminal vesicles, pseudoappendicitis
to appendicitis, nursing caps to clothing.
Two Terms — The most precise way to cover a topic may be two MeSH terms in
combination, e.g. jejunitis to jejunal diseases and enteritis.
Textwords — It is assumed you will use textwords in some cases to define a subject,
e.g. tobacco smoke pollution (MeSH term) and passive (textword) to
retrieve passive smoking.
Check Tags — Large-volume concepts are routinely “checked” for in each article by
indexers. Check tags pinpoint specific age groups, males or females,
humans or animals, publication types, etc.
Drugs — Drugs are indexed under the generic name, e.g. valium is indexed to
diazepam.
Medical Specialty — There are separate terms for the medical specialty and the disease or
organ, e.g. endocrinology is the specialty versus endocrine diseases
or endocrine glands.
Neoplasms — Neoplasms are indexed to site and histologic type, e.g. adenocarcinoma
of the colon is indexed to both colonic neoplasms and adenocarcinoma.
Relational Concepts — Some relational concepts cannot be indexed precisely, e.g., degrees of
quality or quantity, specific time relationships, primary versus
secondary except for neoplasms, general body positions. Try or
experiment with textwords for these concepts. Even then you may
not retrieve the relationship you wish.
“Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the hierarchical classification scheme of some 19,000 main
headings and codes used for indexing databases produced by the National Library of Medicine,
must be cited when looking for “best practices” in indexing. The Medline database is a premier
biomedical database and is the electronic counterpart to Index Medicus, International Nursing Index,
International Dental Literature. MeSH indexing available within Medline is a key feature of the
database.
The Medical Subject Headings are continually revised and updated by subject specialists responsible
for areas of the health sciences in which they have knowledge and expertise. The staff collects new
terms as they appear in the scientific literature or in emerging areas of research; define these terms
within the context of existing vocabulary; and recommend their addition to MeSH. They also receive
suggestions from indexers and other professionals. This indexing structure has stood the test of
time and is widely acclaimed for the accuracy and precision in retrieval that it allows.
MeSH should be considered the gold standard and a benchmark for evaluating indexing structures
in other disciplines” (Sykes, 2001, 5-6).
Jenuwine & Floyd (2004) investigated the performance of two search strategies in the retrieval of
primary research papers containing descriptive information on the sleep of healthy people from
MEDLINE. Two search strategies—one based on the use of only Medical Subject Headings (MeSH),
the second based on text-word searching—were evaluated as to their specificity and sensitivity in
retrieving a set of relevant research papers published in the journal Sleep from 1996 to 2001 that
were preselected by a hand search.

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