Database Resources of the Defense Pest Management
Information Analysis Center
Richard G. Robbins, Ph.D.
Thank you, LTC Debboun.
Hi, everyone. In the brief time we have together this morning, I’d like to introduce you
to the databases that are routinely used at DPMIAC to fill literature requests. All are
Boolean in nature, and most of you are no doubt already familiar with the first of these,
which is our in-house system, the so-called LRS [Slide 1]:
http://lrs.afpmb.org/rlgn_app/ar_login/guest/guest
Here, in the basic search box, you could enter any search term (authors, keywords, words
from the title or text of a paper) and retrieve rafts of hits, but you would almost always be
better served by proceeding immediately to our advanced search page [Slide 2]:
http://lrs.afpmb.org/BA1G2DVK24Q4KU8A6XFDDQ12/arc/al_03_f0X
where, as you can see, you can search by terms in the document title, by author, by terms
in the document text, by journal title, and by year range. Let’s work a concrete example.
Say I want to search for papers on the ticks of Taiwan. If I specify that the document text
must contain all of the words “ticks” and “Taiwan” [Slide 3], I’m going to retrieve an
unmanageable number of hits, including many false positives [Slide 4]. However, when
we think about it, it’s evident that the focus of our search should be Taiwan, so let’s
instead say that “Taiwan” must appear in the document title and “ticks” in the document
text [Slide 5]. This search strategy yields a much more manageable list of hits, with
virtually no false positives [Slide 6].
A tremendous advantage of the LRS is that all of the documents accessioned here are
available as full-text PDFs, which may be viewed on screen, printed, or saved and emailed. Thus, in our last search, if we click on my checklist [Slide 7], we can view it in
its entirety and save it wherever we wish [Slide 8].
However, the LRS is not the only database available to DPMIAC customers. Through a
contract with the Ovid Corporation, anyone associated with the AFPMB can
simultaneously search three powerful biological databases – Agricola, CAB Abstracts,
and Medline – and subsequently remove any duplicate hits shared by these databases.
Let’s go to the Ovid autologin page [Slide 9]:
http://gateway.ovid.com/autologin.cgi
Here, by simply typing in our user ID and password (we have only five user ports, so
contact me for passwords), we are sent to a page where we are asked to select our
databases [Slide 10]. Clicking on Agricola and CAB Abstracts, and then clicking
“Continue” [Slide 11], we are sent to our search page, where we can enter the following
Boolean search string:
(argasid$ or ixodid$ or tick$) and Taiwan [the “$” is a truncation term]
which yields a hit list similar to what we saw when working in Advanced mode with the
LRS [Slide 12].
We want next to click on “Remove Duplicates” [Slide 13], which prompts a request for
deduping preferences [Slide 14]. For the sake of this simple example, we’ll just use the
drop-down lists to reverse the positions of the two databases we selected and click on
“Continue” [Slide 15].
You see that where hits were shared by our two databases, those in Agricola have been
eliminated. We can now view the full text of our hit list, including any available
abstracts, and print out, save, or even e-mail this list.
Another powerful and popular biological database is Biosis, which is available to
DPMIAC customers through a contract with the Dialog Corporation. Let’s go to the
Dialog login page [Slide 16]:
http://www.dialogclassic.com/
This system differs from Ovid in that our charges are not fixed; rather, using the Dialog
databases is like riding in a New York City taxi: you pay for both your hits (your
“destination”) and your time online (your time in Midtown traffic). For the sake of the
Board’s budget, only DPMIAC personnel run Dialog searches in response to customer
requests. Again, let’s try our “ticks of Taiwan” example.
First, we type in our user ID and password to get to our search screen [Slide 17], where
we type in “b5,” the code for the entire Biosis database, and click on “Submit.” This
brings up the boilerplate for Biosis [Slide 18]. We can now enter the following search
string:
ss(argasid? or ixodid? or tick?) and Taiwan [the “?” is a truncation term]
which, as expected, yields a somewhat shorter hit list because we are working with just a
single database [Slide 19].
We don’t need to remove duplicates in this case, but we now have many options for
viewing the results of our search. One of these involves commands that are summarized
by typing in the following:
t5/7/all
This means that we are asking Dialog to print out the contents of set 5 in option 7 (full
bibliographic citation and abstract for each hit), and that we want this process repeated
for all the items in our set of search results. Click “Submit” and the entire set appears
[Slide 20], to our specifications. We can now view these results, save them, or e-mail
them, but whatever we do, it is imperative that we next immediately close out of Dialog
because the “taxi meter” is still running. Therefore, on the command line, type “logout”
and click “Submit” [Slide 21]. Immediately, the estimated bill for the session is
generated and, just to be safe, we can return to the login page and close this browser.
Now, you ask, how do I obtain hard copies of papers that I find in my Ovid or Dialog
searches but that are not in DPMIAC’s LRS? If the items you seek are biomedical in
nature, they can usually be obtained through our DOCLINE contract with the National
Library of Medicine. Again, DOCLINE assesses charges on the basis of usage, and the
current federal government rate per requested paper is $9.
Say, for the sake of argument, that one of my Taiwan tick papers is not in the LRS but,
having been found in the Ovid or Dialog databases, we wish to order it. First, we need a
PMID (a PubMed identification number), which we can find simply by going to NLM’s
PubMed page [Slide 22]:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?tool=LocatorPlusVersionII&holding=nlm
lib
and typing in suitable search terms, such as “Robbins varanensis.” This yields our
PMID: 8691388 [Slide 23]. Now, go to the DOCLINE home page [Slide 24]:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/docline/newdocline.html
and select “DOCLINE Login (Registered Users)” [Slide 25]. We enter our user name
and password to get to the request page [Slide 26]. Next, click on “Requests” and
“Borrow,” which sends us to the Unique Key page [Slide 27], where we type in the
PMID (8691388) for the paper we seek.
And there it is [Slide 28]. We can now click on “Next,” which will send us to the
Routing Instructions page [Slide 29], where I can fill in the data necessary to order a Web
PDF of this paper. Web PDFs usually arrive at my desk within 24 hours of my orders; if
I order in the morning, I can often expect to receive my PDFs on a same-day basis.
For non-biomedical papers, I have stack access at the National Agricultural Library and
silk-glove access to the Rare Book Room of the Library of Congress, privileges I’ve
enjoyed since 1977. And if even these tools disappoint, well, I defer to my home-town
radio station, WQXR: “To be fully informed, read The New York Times.”
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and sincerest thanks to Mr. David W. Hill for his
invaluable assistance in piecing this presentation together.