Drugs and Chemicals

• MeSH contains thousands of chemical terms, so it is likely that specific chemicals will be found by searching the MeSH Browser. Check carefully that the chemical term is a Descriptor rather than a Supplementary Concept Record (SCR) which cannot be used by catalogers. Each SCR points to one or more Descriptors in the Heading Mapped To field which should be used instead


• In many cases the work being cataloged is describing the functional aspect of a chemical: as therapeutic or diagnostic agents; environmental pollutants; endogenous substances, etc.


• In these cases, coordinate the chemical with an appropriate Pharmacologic Action (PA) found in the MeSH record


• For example, the peptide Viomycin, has three Pharmacologic Actions in the MeSH Browser:
  • Anti-Bacterial Agents
    
  • Antibiotics, Antitubercular
    
  • Protein Synthesis Inhibitors
  
  
• If your work is about the use of viomycin in the treatment of tuberculosis, coordinate Viomycin with Antibiotics, Antitubercular (as well as the disease term Tuberculosis or its specific types)


• If your work is on use of viomycin in some context that is not represented by the existing Pharmacologic Actions, search the MeSH D27 tree and select the most appropriate descriptor



Example of a Drug Record






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