• Formulating Your Questions using PICO
  Lei Wang discusses how to construct a good literature search using OvidSP. This tutorial lasts just under 5 minutes.
• Medical Subject Headings
  Lei Wang discusses searching Medline in OvidSP using Medical Subject headings (MeSH). This tutorial lasts just over 11 minutes.
• Combining and Limiting Searches in OvidSP
  Lei Wang provides more tips on using the OvidSP search interface. This tutorial lasts just over 6 minutes.
• OvidSP Search Result Display
  Lei Wang provides more tips on using the OvidSP search interface. This tutorial lasts just under 7 minutes.
• Creating AutoAlerts and RSS Feeds in Ovid SP
  Lei Wang demonstrates how to save searches as "AutoAlerts" or RSS feeds so you can be automatically notified of any new articles that match your search criteria. This tutorial last 4 minutes.
  If you find that your St. John's Ovid access does not allow you to use these features please contact a Medical Librarian. St. John's Medical Librarians can also provide assistance in creating AutoAlerts and/or create AutoAlerts for you upon request.
• Saving Searches in OvidSP
  Lei Wang demonstrates how to save an Ovid search strategy / search history. This allows you to automatically re-run a search in the future, or complete a search in more than one session. Please note that saving a search history is different from saving search results. This tutorial lasts 3 minutes.

Latest Updates

August 2009

Ovid is continuing to release enhancements to the OvidSP search interface. Here is a summary of the latest enhancements. Contact a St. John's Medical Librarian for further assistance.

• Journal A-Z Page. A search bar is available for quick searching of all Ovid journals or just journals St. John's subscribes to.
• Filters. You can now choose to limit your search using several filters (filter by title, subject, or my favorites)
• Table of Contents Page. A search bar is available to search within issues. Breadcrumb trails are available for easier navigation within a journal

September 2008

• Multi-Search Field Mode for all databases. This is a new search feature in addition to the Basic and Advanced Search Options.
• Collapsible Search Aid box. The search aid box appears near your results list.
• Results Manager (where you select how to print, save, or email your results) is collapsible and available above and below the main search box. You will see "click to close" in the Results Manager area. Just click and the Results Manager collapses until you expand it again.
• Movable Search History box. On the right side of the Search History box is a rectangular icon with thin lines. Click and drag and you'll see your Search History box move.
• Sort searches in ascending or descending order. Useful if you prefer having your latest search at the top of the list rather than at the bottom.
• Choose the limits you want to appear as common limits the main search page. Select Edit Limits button to make modifications.

How does Basic Search work?
Basic Search employs Natural Language Processing to make it easy for all types of users—not just beginners—to get quick yet comprehensive and accurate answers to complex questions across all content. Basic search is intended to find best results, not all results. The results of a basic search will be limited to 500 citations.

With Basic Search, simply enter a search term or ask a question in ordinary, everyday English terms and click Search. There’s no need to use special syntax rules, search conventions, or complicated search strategies.

Best Practices in Basic Search (print ready PDF handout)
The tips below are a good guide to helping you and your users get the search results you’re looking for quickly and easily.

• State your query as concisely as possible. Every term entered is weighted in the search algorithm. Try not to use unnecessary modifiers such as “really big ekg changes in advanced hypokalemia.” Just enter, "ekg changes in hypokalemia".
• Use nouns more than verbs.
• Avoid using Boolean Operators like AND, OR, NOT
• Do not "force phrasing" by imposing quotation marks, parenthesis, or hyphens within your query. For example, if you enter weather-related you lose all expansions on the word weather because Ovid perceives the hyphenated phrase as a single term that has no possible expansions.
• Avoid spelling errors by keeping the Check Spelling box pre-selected.
• Use only free text or ordinary, everyday English terms; Ovid syntax is not fully supported in Basic Search.
• Expect approximately 500 relevancy-ranked results; however, occasionally you will see more when articles have the same rank. 

1. OvidSP filters the terms of your query, eliminating irrelevant noise words and tightening word choices into validated search terms and phrases. Here is an example.

2. OvidSP utilizes a proprietary medical lexicon (drawn from the Unified Medical Language System [UMLS] Meta-thesaurus, medical dictionaries and thesauri, medical acronyms, drug and disease names, and standard American and British English dictionaries) to expand validated terms to include:

• Word variations
• Synonyms (such as alternate names of drugs or diseases)
• Acronyms
• Alternative spellings (such as those that occur between British English and American English)

3. OvidSP then analyzes your original query to identify the nouns, noun phrases, and adjectives that shape the topics of your query, and incorporate them into an overall, expanded search strategy. For example, a Natural Language search for weather related migraines would expand to include the following terms from the lexicon:

4. OvidSP then executes searches using these expansions and compiles all findings into a single results set on the Main Search Page.
 

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Ovid Advanced Search (previously titled the Ovid Syntax Search)

The Ovid Advanced Search tab is very equivalent to the Ovid Gateway searching most St. John's users are familiar with. The search terms that are entered are mapped to subject headings.

View an online tutorial

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Annotate your search results with "yellow sticky notes"

An electronic "yellow sticky note" appears next to each citation. Click on it and you can create, view, and edit notes on a specific citation that appears in your search results. The really neat thing is that these permanently stay with the article after logging out. You can enter a note on one day about an article and then find the same article again a week later and still see your note. These notes also print out with your citations and abstracts.

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RSS Feeds

OvidSP was designed to bring you instant, convenient access to high-quality information. That means new tools and functionality to help you save time getting the research you need. One of the platform’s most popular new features is the capability to set up RSS feeds for automatic, regular delivery of important content:

• Journal eTOCs – Get the table of contents for a new journal issue as soon as the issue is available in Journals@Ovid (also available via email AutoAlert).
• Saved Searches – Currently, you can save a specific search for a journal or database; and when that database or journal is updated with new content, Gateway performs your saved search on the new content and sends you the information via an email AutoAlert. Now you can receive these saved searches via RSS!
• Publish-Ahead-of-Print Journal eTOCs – Journals@Ovid also offers some Lippincott Williams & Wilkins journal content electronically before it appears in print (also available via email AutoAlert).

So What are RSS Feeds?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology enables automatic, regular delivery of content to your computer so you don’t have to navigate to another website for that content. Anyone who subscribes to an RSS feed gets a steady stream of up-to-date information whenever that information becomes available. The latest news comes to you! Chances are many of your users already have RSS feeds enabled on their computer—for news headlines, blog postings, and more. Click here to read more about RSS.

In OvidSP, Really Simple Syndication is Really Simple.
OvidSP displays RSS feeds just like other systems do: as an icon in a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox; in a feed reader, software installed on your PC; in web pages; or in online applications such as Google Reader that allow you to aggregate feeds from multiple sources.

Click one or more links below for screenshots that illustrate how to set up RSS feeds in OvidSP:

• Subscribing to a journal eTOC feed: Step 1
• Subscribing to a journal eTOC feed: Step 2
• Subscribing to an RSS feed for Saved Searches
• Example of a journal eTOC feed displayed in Internet Explorer

Note that all OvidSP RSS feeds comply with RSS 2.0 specification standards (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html).

RSS Feeds on OvidSP, a handout from the Himmelfarb Library