Yale Medical Library

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale
University

Quick Help for Using HISTLINE via WWW

HISTLINE (HISTory of medicine on LINE) is a bibliographical database on the history of medicine and health care produced by the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine. Going back to 1964, the database includes all historical articles indexed by MEDLINE, as well as articles in various historical journals not covered by MEDLINE, books, book chapters, and relevant dissertations listed in Dissertation ABstracts. It is the online equivalent of the former Bibliography of the History of Medicine published by NLM until 1993. Histline is free to the public and does not require a Yale IP address or ID.

How to get there:

1. From Medmenu choose (A-Z list) and either HISTLINE or Internet Grateful Med:

2. From Sterling Research Work Station, choose Databases,then Internet Grateful Med. :

3. Go to URL address: http://igm.nlm.nih.gov. Scroll downand click on HISTLINE. :

Simple first search:

You can enter author, title or subject in one of the query boxes The box with the default "Subject" is a pull-down menu. Click the mouse button and you can choose the term that corresponds to your entry in the query box. The "Apply Limits" area has pull-down menus that allow you to limit publication types, languages, geographical areas, and time period.

Try the help text:

Click on the little blue "I" information icon and help text will be displayed for that action area.

Author search (example):

Search for [Frederic L. Holmes] AS [Author Name]. This kind of search will retrieve citations to articles written by or about Frederic Holmes. When searching for citations by or about specific authors, enter the First Name followed by an optional Middle Initial, then the Last Name.

Title world search (example):

Search for [middle bedside ages] as [Title Word]. This search will retrieve citations that have all of the words in the title (e.g., "Bedside manners in the Middle Ages.").

Subject word search (example):

Search for [substance-related disorders] AS [Subject] AND search for [cocaine] As [Subject]. This search will retrieve citations about substance-related disorders and cocaine. Place an asterisk at the end of a term to search for all terms that begin with that part of a word.

Mix and Match Search (example):

You can mix and match what you search for in the text boxes. Search for:[Frederic L. Homes] AS [Author} AND [William Coleman] AS [Author Name] AND search for [experimental physiology] AS [Subject]. This will retrieve citations to works written by Holmes and Coleman about experimental physiology. (The Investigative enterprise: experimental physiology

Ands and Ors:

The default action is to AND between text boxes. You can select the "add or" Option to bring up a new text box in an "or cluster". The search screen will change to make clear what will happen. By combining "OR clusters" with ANDs, you can set up searches like (A OR B OR C) AND (D OR E) AND F. This sounds more difficult than it is.

Explore the Metathesaurus:

The Metathesaurus contains 1,052,000 names for 476,000 concepts. Enter a word or phrase in text box on query screen, and then click on "Find MeSH/Meta Terms." When you are presented with a list of concepts, try clicking on the underlined concepts to focus your search or find the right biomedical concept name for a lay term.

Automatic mapping and the MeSH controlled vocabulary:

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is a controlled vocabulary used for indexing Articles in this database. Every term entered in a query term box is mapped (translated) to [MeSH Terms] OR [Text Word]. Use "Details of Search" button to see exactly what has been retrieved for your search. If you then go to the Metathesaurus, additional information will be available. For example, enter "heart attack" in query box. Click on "Perform Search" and then "Details of Search" will show that your text words "heart attack" are mapped with the MeSH Term "myocardial infarction." Return to search screen and with "Find MeSH/Meta Terms" additional information about your term and related terms will be displayed to help you either broaden or narrow your search.

Use the Internet Grateful Med User's Guide:

For more detail on these and more advanced search techniques, try this online tutorial (http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/splash/igm.survival.guide.html). This should help You retrieve citations that are right on target every time.

Print/download your results:

You can print the citations using the "Print" command in your Web browser, download part or all of the citations to a disk using the command from the results screen, or email the results to yourself or someone else.