Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : May/June 2004

Dialog DataStar Adds Scope Notes

Dialog DataStar has enhanced some of its biomedical databases with online thesauri to include Scope Notes. The following databases contain Scope Notes:

• MEDLINE®
• EMBASE®
• CINAHL®
• Psychological Abstracts
• ToxFile
• CANCERLIT®

Scope Notes provide information about the terms used for indexing. Depending on the database, they contain a description of the meaning of the term, a history note indicating how long the term has been used to index articles, previously used indexing terms, and synonyms of the term and related terms.

How It Works

View Figure 1

The thesaurus can be accessed in different ways: by browsing, by entering a term or by using thesaurus mapping. When you display the thesaurus in one of the databases, a new yellow icon displays in front of each thesaurus term. Click the icon to display the Scope Notes in a separate window. See Figure 1.

The Scope Notes display when accessing the thesaurus and also when displaying a record. You can check the meaning of a particular thesaurus term and how it is used at any time during the search process.

top