OCATORplus Now Using 2003 MeSH^®
As of December 23, 2002 the National Library of Medicine (NLM) adopted the 2003 MeSH vocabulary for cataloging and for records being created by collaborating data producers.

MeSH subject terms in LocatorPlus, the online public access catalog module of NLM's Voyager integrated library system, were changed to reflect 2003 MeSH. For a full description of these changes, please see the article, What's New for 2003 MeSH^®. NLM Tech Bull. 2002 Nov-Dec;(329):e5., and the document titled Changes in MeSH 2003 on the NLM MeSH Section Home page.

In general, Cataloging applied the changes described in the list of Replaced Medical Subject Headings as they were applied for citations in MEDLINE^®. Notably, to conform with the recent practice in the MeSH vocabulary of using lowercase words to represent Greek symbols as well as the changes in official scientific names of species and viruses, the Cataloging Section is correcting the forms of these terms in bibliographic records in LocatorPlus. In addition, after analysis, it was determined that the content of most records in LocatorPlus that contained the previous MeSH term Cotton would be more accurately represented by the new MeSH term Cotton Fiber rather than solely by the term Gossypium.

Because of this difference in database content, different choices were made for the maintenance of records containing the MeSH Heading Cotton in MEDLINE and in LocatorPlus. Cotton in MEDLINE was changed to Gossypium. Similarly, in LocatorPlus, all previous uses of the term Cotton were changed to the term Gossypium in conformance with Year-End Processing for MEDLINE to facilitate cross-file searching using the NLM Gateway. In addition, to better reflect the subject content of the bibliographic records in the online public access catalog, the heading Cotton Fiber was also added to records in the following cases:

1. When the term Cotton appeared on records in LocatorPlus in coordination with any of the following MeSH terms:
         Byssinosis
         Textile Industry
         Textiles
         Dust
         Occupational Diseases
         Industrial Waste
   
   
   
2. In addition, for any record in LocatorPlus containing the term Cotton which was qualified by the subheading standards, the new MeSH heading Cotton Fiber qualified by the subheading standards was also added.

All MeSH 2003 changes are reflected in the bibliographic records in LocatorPlus, which are also accessed via the NLM gateway.

Use MeSH 2003 when searching for books, journals, audiovisuals, or electronic resources, by MeSH subject in LocatorPlus or in the NLM Gateway.

MeSH 2003 is the subject vocabulary used for headings in LocatorPlus in the following fields of the bibliographic records:

MARC21 FIELD             Contains:

650                                     Main headings or main headings and
                                           topical subheadings

651                                     Geographic headings

655                                     Publication Types

For more information on how to search for fields in NLM LocatorPlus, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/lpfields.html#heading.

Changes to Keyword Descriptors in LocatorPlus
Keyword descriptor terms assigned by the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE) have been carried on bibliographic records in the NLM locally defined subject MARC 21 field 690, with the local subfield $9 coded as KIE descriptor and the subfield $8 coded with the value k for this collaborating data producer.

During the development of 2003 MeSH, NLM and KIE concluded an extensive collaboration to incorporate these KIE keyword descriptor terms into MeSH either as main headings or as cross references.

On December 6, MeSH 2003 headings were added to the MARC 21 650 field of LocatorPlus bibliographic records to replace KIE keyword descriptors incorporated into the MeSH vocabulary. Once those changes were made, all KIE keyword descriptors on the approximately 16,000 KIE records in LocatorPlus were deleted from the MARC 21 690 field. No new KIE keyword descriptors will be added.

By Evelyn S. Bain
Cataloging Section
and
By Marti Scheel
Cataloging Section

Bain ES, Scheel M. Cataloging News - 2003. NLM Tech Bull. 2003 Jan-Feb;(330):e1.