MeSH on Demand Tool from the NLM
MeSH on Demand is a computerized indexing tool handy for quickly identifying MeSH Terms in a set of inputted text. It is freely available to use from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) - Access the site online here: http://ii.nlm.nih.gov/Interactive/MeSHonDemand.shtml
MeSH on Demand identifies the NLM's controlled medical subject headings, called MeSH Terms for short, in your set of inputted text, using the NLM Medical Text Indexer (MTI) program. After processing, MeSH on Demand returns a simple computer generated list of MeSH Terms identified as relevant to your chunk of text (can be up to 10,000 characters). Each of the identified MeSH Terms has a link to the corresponding MeSH Browser Web page for that MeSH Term. For more information about MeSH on Demand read the announcement in the NLM Technical Bulletin article.
As the output is computer generated you may well question how well the results mirror what a human indexer would have done. An excellent comparison was done by Mahria LeBow (March 2014) and posted on the Dragonfly blog from the NN/LM National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region. The author concluded that "These terms would be able to give me a starting place for searching for related literature, and they happen to have a fair amount of overlap with the terms generated by a human indexer on a similar, older article." Another potential use Mahria identified for this tool was "to identify possible MeSH terms for recently published articles of interest that are still listed as “in process” in PubMed."
Try it out and let me know how well the tool performs for you by leaving your comments.
Labels: indexing, medical subject headings, MeSH, MeSH Browser, MeSH on Demand, NLM, NLM/PNR
posted by Ann Celestine @ 10:34 AM
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