Using my Medline Program.

1.) Installation

The Program is written in Visual Basic 2010 Express and runs autoatically - without permanant Installation - from the program's start page. Remember to start it from Internet Explorer, other browsers won't work as I tried (Opera, Firefox, Chrome). It is validated to run only on Microsoft Windows Systems, tested are Windows 7 and Windows XP.

2.) First run

The program has to be run in the online mode as shown in 1) to get it started.

To understand how intuitive it performs, type groth-o into the search box and press the ask button. A message box asks whether you want 1 free and 61 other articles. Check ok. The programm retrieves the records from the pubmed server at ncbi and it appears the print button just right to the ask button. Press the print button. The printer gives a list of the 62 citations. These are the essentials.

3.) Doing it better

a) Printing format

The printing format has to be set at the level of the default printer settings to 2 pages per sheet, duplex if you have, possibly with frame to look smarter before running the program. (Howto: START / DEVICES and PRINTERS / rightclick on selected printer // right click AS STANDARD PRINTER // right click PRINTER OPTIONS). The changes remain permanent until restored.

b) Retrieving selected Records

On the printout, there is a number left to the citation. Its the Pubmed PMID number, which identifies a given record. To receive records by PMID number, you have to switch the mode the program operates. Type into the mode box (left to the search box) a # from the keyboard. A message box opens. Type 4984987,8651014,2416163, press enter and when the message box reappears, enter. Data will be retrieved, so press the print button when it appears.

c) Retrieving Abstracts, Authors and Affiliations

Just before performing the same actions as 3b, check the little boxes under the search box.

4.) Getting Papers

The program is not designed to check for library codes or availabilty. To obtain a link to open a pubmed page into your browser, perform a retrieval as shown in 3b). The link appears on the big box in the lower rigth quadrant of the screen - and it is transferred to the clipboard so you can paste (CTRL-V/STRG-V) it directly into the http field of your browser as a web address. Now, you can change the pub med display settings to items per page 200 and format abstracts. The link buttons of the records lead the way to the pdf documents as you are familiar with it.

While performing this action, keep a parallel title list to recognize those papers you could not receive this way. About 20% of online available papers have no linkout buttons on pubmed, so you have to check your libraries system (in Germany, Regensburger Liste). The rest is left to physical photocopying, indeed.

Only for Germany: A set of Journals which can be accessed remote online and free for private users if licensed is documented here on my system. Its called Deutsche Nationallizenz.

5.) Printing your bulk pdf papers

Currently, i am not affiliated with a formally research institution. I go into the library, put the pdfs on a usb stick and print them at home without having remote access. The little hint how to print 100 pdfs with 16 clicks is to first set the default printer options to 2 pages, frame, duplex as shown above, then open the folder where the pdfs are stored, mark about 10 items by simultaneously holding the SHIFT button and marking them with the DOWN ARROW, then right-click and choose PRINT. They will be bulk handeled by acrobat reader. More than 10 at a time wont work.

6.) back to my program

d) To optimize your search terms, look how pubmed transformed your search. The term Igg4 should generate about 4.000 records, pubmed retreives erroneously 120.000 records because of an invalid explosion to immunoglobulin g[All Fields]. The transformed search is displayed in the right lower quadrant box, and you can copy-paste e.g. "Igg4"[All fields] from there into the search box - and ask again.

e) the mode box contains more options than pmid[#] or search [?] since it provides filters which check whether a paper is freely online available (with the restriction that pubmed has an absolute lack of information from some publishers and essentialy no knowlege about opt-inned open access papers or papers hosted on institutional hosts. A payed open access publication does not mean that the reader recognizes it on pubmed.) So, with some reduced sensitivity, you can check whether a paper is free full text [sb] or whether it is a review article (with some internal expansion of the concept to get more sensitivity). The options are listed in the big box left lower quadrant.

f) To keep up with your histories, they are printed full on the print-outs including date of access (check a complex search term from a pubmed screen shot to feel the difference). On the title lists, free full text papers appear first ! This is convenient to you since it makes no work to retrieve a pdf at home compared to an 50 miles tour to your physical library to perform photocopying.

7. Copyrights and Licenses

The work shown on www.kidney.de is not supported by any grants. As a physician, i am happy to have the little economic ressources to get it going. It is free-to-use for personal as well as institutional use, and it might be modified according to a non-commercial Creative Commons Licence (code on request).

Feel happy to make use of the google links since they are installed for some intrinsic economic reasons.

8. Third parties components

The program is designed to print barcode labels instead of pubmed pmid numbers. You have to install exactly this font, which is royalty free for individuals and small enterprises and has to be licenced to enterprises at 50+ employees i think. Here appears the link to the ID Automaticon Barcode 39 Font. Applicable barcode readers are at about 30 Euro, you can search on amazon, they have to read "barcod39".

9. Some stupidity and why it occurs

a) Sure, the PMIDS could be typed into the search box, why the message box implementation ? My barcode reader doesnt recognize commata, so it gives the number plus enter, thats the reason.

b) The printer options are not implemented by a windows printer options dialog on program level. This is because of an idiosyncratic and reproducible incompatibility of windows 7 and my hp-compaq notebook (which occurs in visual basic, and also in editor but not in other programs using such printer dialog fields) and non-availability of qualified manufacturers help. It is one line of program code... .

c) Some things have to be done in some order (sorry, bad code...): first, output options, second, mode options, third, search term. Default settings are optimized.

d) It doesnt store data on your system and does not catch information e.g. search terms (spyware); program code is available on request. I get IP information if someone accesses my web server, it is not connected with the page accessed. I get individual page accession rate data. This is current web hosting philosophy.

10. Dont worry be happy

I have done the medline searches for my metatextbook project with essentially this program (of course, many special and undocumented functions which are needed for the special application are omitted from the general customers version).

Sure a paper based offline application is needed if you have to keep up with 4.000 pubmed records per workday ! A little bonus is out there, you can generate citation code for in-text citations in wikimedia (wikipedia) based applications with the output format button clipboard:wiki. They are ready to (copy)-paste !

Ossip Groth