UMLS SEARCHING WORKSTATION

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The recent release of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) by the National Library of Medicine offers a singular opportunity to ease a major burden of the user of bibliographic retrieval systems - differing search vocabularies and a variety of interfaces among databases. The University of Maryland Health Sciences Library (HSL) proposes to create a workstation software system which could serve as the bibliographic retrieval component of a clinical workstation. Over the course of a three- year project the HSL will work toward three specific objectives. As a first step, the HSL will devise a moderate-cost microcomputer-based workstation that will store the UMLS on magnetic disk and provide a DOS- based windowing interface. The interface would accept keyword or subject terms from users and guide them, via the UMLS, toward selection of a heading in the target thesaurus such as MeSH, Library of Congress Subject Headings, DSM-III, or any of the other vocabularies represented in the UMLS. The second objective is to link the UMLS workstation to several of the bibliographic databases currently available in the HSL. The workstation would transparently display the existing interface of the host database but would provide access to the UMLS if requested by the user or if the user entered a non-vocabulary term while doing a search, such as a subject search, which required entry of controlled vocabulary terms. The final objective is to provide a standard interface for each of five databases (HSL OPAC, MaryMED, HSL/Current Contents, PsycLit, and CINAHL) running under three retrieval systems (LS/2000, TOXNET, and Silver Platter). The UMLS interface developed as the first objective will be the model for a replacement interface. Workstation software that translates the "native" interface of each system to the new interface will be written for each retrieval system.