davidrothman.net

PubMed Preview

http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/pubmed

First impression: TONS of wasted screen real estate on that front page.

What do you think?

(Thanks to Patricia Anderson for the heads up!)

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September 29th, 2009 | Category: For Medical Libraryfolk | Subscribe to comments | Both comments and pings are currently closed

20 Responses to “PubMed Preview”

1
Erika:
September 29th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
First impression–I couldn’t figure out where to enter my search, and actually clicked the “Quick Start” link b/f going back and finding it.

And I want my details!
2
Stew:
September 29th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I agree with your sentiment, and with Patricia and Erika. It’s a search engine. Why isn’t the damn search form front-and-center, instead of being squeezed even more tightly into the top of the page?
3
Martin:
September 30th, 2009 at 3:52 am
I miss the direct link to the MeSH that we have on the old front page.
4
Ellie:
September 30th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Let the buzz begin. As with anything that’s been static for a number of years this interface will take some getting used to. Let’s take it for a test drive and find what works and what doesn’t.
5
Creaky:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:39 am
What I think is that my voice is going to give out long before I’ve explained all these new site changes and search techniques to the 1,000 people who are going to ask me what happened to PubMed.

Alternative search engines like LigerCat to search PubMed are looking more attractive to me now (see it at http://ligercat.ubio.org/journals )
Creaky
6
PF Anderson:
September 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I actually love all the white space. I always found it hard to read all the small font stuff crammed together in the blue bar. That is an accessibility issue for folks with moderate vision impairment and/or certain cognitive differences like ADHD. Now that I am older and wearing bifocals, I have been increasingly finding the layout of the blue bar slows me down as I hunt for where the right link is and try not to click on something adjacent. Blowing up the font size wasn’t working for me – the design wasn’t very forgiving of larger fonts. So, I am pleasantly surprised and more than will to take the time to try to test it out. I know there will be things that frustrate me, but I am more impressed than I expected.
7
PF Anderson:
September 30th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Oh, Erika, details is still there. Click on “advanced search” and look right by the search box.
8
Erika:
September 30th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Oh, I know details is there–but I want it to be easily available from my search results. I don’t want to have to make an extra click.

Martin, there actually is a direct link to MeSH on the front–it’s under More Resources.

I agree that it’s a nice clean look, but (at least on my machine) it’s too hard to see the search box.
9
Dale Prince:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I actually like the white space on the front page. I don’t use Yahoo! anymore (and find typing in “search.yahoo.com” too tedious and stupid) because of the eye-clogging busyness of the site.

I do wish, however, that they had managed to put Details on the front screen. I always tell people it is the PubMed searcher’s best friend. Now the best friend is two clicks away: second best friend. In fact, as helpful as a the Help link is (not very) they could do away with it and put Details in it’s place.
10
Jacqueline:
September 30th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
I agree with you David.

Sad that the History is gone. Basically you don’t need the white space, because you can only perform ONE search now.;)
In contrast, the advanced search is full of limits, indexes and bars that I seldom apply. I agree with Creaky: some 3rd party tools seem more adequate for beginners/simple searches. But for advanced searches I will move to OVID MEDLINE, for good.
11
PubMed® Redesign is here… to try. « Laika’s MedLibLog:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
[...] ‘modern’” as someone on Patricia’s blogpost said, I agree with David Rothman, that there are “TONS of wasted screen real estate on that front page”. Why is the search bar hidden at the [...]
12
Meryl Jamison:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
History’s not gone; it’s Recent Activity, history items are now on every page, and the link to all of them is under “See More>>>”. And as for the “hidden” search bar. Um. How do I say this. It’s at the top of the page, *where it has always been*. And just like it is everywhere else on the Web, except on Google’s home page. (Which is, by the way, almost all “wasted real estate”.)

What’s *hidden* is the link to Details; I found it lurking under Advanced Search. Which makes no sense at all, because the Details links is not an input (like the Advanced Search page), it’s an output about the current result set. What are those PubMed guys thinking? I’d rather have Details in one of those little windows on the right, than have to go digging for it every time. Or at least have the option of putting it there temporarily.

And by the way, can anybody find the printer? I looked, and couldn’t find it. So I tried just printing with File -> Print in the browser. Try it. Really you must. I wondered for a moment how to print a list of things, rather than all the results on a page. The best I can do is put stuff on the clipboard and then print that.

The one feature I was hoping for isn’t there. It’s a tiny thing, a “back to results” link. Yes, I can use a back button. But I just know my query is there in the background, waiting for me. There’s just no link to it, at least not for page 2 and beyond. So I make do with the back button. Sigh.

I don’t want to sign off on a sigh, though. I’m actually going to use just this pre-release version every day to see how it goes. So far, I’m encouraged. The output is much easier to read, both esthetically and organizationally. Hope they don’t change it *too* much (again) before the “final version”.
13
Ellie:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:39 am
Here’s the link to the NLM Technical Bulletin about the changes to PubMed.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so09/so09_pm_redesign.html
14
Megan:
October 1st, 2009 at 11:32 am
I like the new clean look but will desperately miss direct links to Details on the results page. I think everyone needs to email in about that one and maybe it can be brought back a la SCM.

And why, oh why, didn’t they take the opportunity to suggest MeSH terms from the drop down rather than other user’s poor search terms. Lost opportunities to improve searches abound on this redesign, but to me this is the big fat miss.
15
Evel:
October 1st, 2009 at 11:47 am
So – I think maybe for the average user – it will be more appealing…
that being said …No “Send to Print” option – which I used heavily for a clean layout – to cut and paste in to emails!

No quick access to the clipboard — you have to be in the middle of a search to find the link to it…..

No limiting – unless you are in the advanced feature….

No details – unless you are in the advanced feature

That being said – I wish they had a default – where you could set the advanced screen as the default for your organization – or maybe they do and I don’t know it…that way in a big research organization – they can bypass the “easy” screen….

I do think they added some nice features….just can’t figure out what they are at this moment!

so that is my two cents worth!
16
Pierre:
October 1st, 2009 at 12:52 pm
The “Save as RSS” button isn’t always displayed.

see the icons:

http://lindenb.tumblr.com/post/200750008/new-pubmed-rss-for-neil

and

http://twitpic.com/jp0sp
17
Ellie:
October 1st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
There’s a webinar next week to discuss the PubMed Redesign.
Here’s the link to the NLM Technical Bulletin describing the event:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so09/so09_pm_demo.html
18
davidrothman.net » LigerCat:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:03 pm
[...] a recent comment, Creaky (Kathleen Crea) made me aware of LigerCat, a 3rd-Party PubMed/MEDLINE tool that is new to [...]
19
Lin:
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:09 am
I taught a workshop yesterday and had students used the PubMed Redesign. Guess what? Not a happy switch. As the searches went on, all students went back to the old interface. It’s all about searching habit. Once end users get used to a search interface, it will take time to adopt a new one, even though the new one claims to be even more user friendly.

I would like to see History and Details in obvious place not only in Advance page as I always tell students how to/where to combine two search terms and how to edit their search queries if needed.

I also like to see a “back to search results” tab somewhere for better navigation as I’m not a “back” button user.
20
PubMed Redesign, A Physician’s Opinion | Dr Shock MD PhD:
October 5th, 2009 at 2:31 am
[...] David Rothman also found the loss of screen real estate a waste, his post has many thought provoking comments. [...]

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