NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.
Bookshelf Help [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Center for Biotechnology Information (US); 2005-.
This living document contains a collection of discovery guides and queries to help you find various types of biomedical, life sciences, and healthcare literature available in the NCBI Bookshelf.
Discovery by Subject
Subject Queries
The following queries are designed to help you find information indexed in Bookshelf across a range of subjects.
The information is from content sources collected by the National Library of Medicine and in scope for Bookshelf, including clinical guidelines, systematic reviews, monographs, textbooks, and other content types deposited by publishers, funders, and funded authors. These queries may be refined by combining them with Bookshelf format queries relevant to your search.
These queries are intended to return the most relevant, rather that the most comprehensive, results on a subject. Bookshelf’s default relevance search algorithm examines all indexed fields and ranks results based on the frequency of searched terms appearing in the full-text content. However, these queries limit the search scope to the title, abstract, available MeSH terms provided by NLM cataloguers, and keywords provided by authors and publishers, delivering more targeted results.
Toxicology Discovery Guide
Bookshelf contains a substantial collection of toxicology literature. The following sections provide more detail about this collection and how to discover toxicology content within Bookshelf.
What Toxicology content is collected by NLM?
According to the American College of Medical Toxicologists, medical toxicology is a field of medicine dedicated to the evaluation and treatment of poisoned patients. Some of the problems they evaluate include unintentional and intentional overdoses, exposure to industrial chemical products and environmental hazards, substance use disorder management, diagnosis and management of certain exposures, and independent medical examinations to assess injury or disability resulting from toxic exposures. Please see the NLM guidelines for toxicology for additional information on the scope of collecting toxicology content within the National Library of Medicine.
How can I find Toxicology content in Bookshelf?
Using Advanced Search
To explore toxicology resources within NCBI Bookshelf, follow these steps in the advanced search feature.
Step 1: Change the Builder drop down menu to “Resource Type”
Step 2: Click “Show index list”
Step 3: Select “toxicology resource” from the list
This will create the following query: “toxicology resources”[Resource Type]
Note: You can refine your search by adding relevant keywords in the second search field
Using Browse Titles
- You can also browse titles in Bookshelf by specific publishers. On the Bookshelf homepage, below the search bar, click “Browse Titles”. From the “Publishers” box on the left-hand side of the screen, select a publisher. Alternatively, enter search terms and then limit your results by selecting a specific publisher. You can further narrow your search by resource types using the “Types” box. For more details, refer to the Bookshelf Help guide.
What formats of Toxicology content does Bookshelf collect?
Bookshelf includes full-text toxicology reports, assessments, and technical reports. You can filter results on the left sidebar by the following content types.
Report: Technical reports detail the progress or results of scientific, technical, or policy research often in response to a narrowly defined research need. Reports in Bookshelf also include systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines.
Systematic reviews are characterized by a methodical and replicable methodology and presentation. They involve a comprehensive search to locate all relevant published and unpublished work on a subject; a systematic integration of search results; and a critique of the extent, nature, and quality of evidence in relation to a particular research question.
Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.
Book – Publications that are complete in one volume or a limited number of volumes. In Bookshelf this includes multi-chapter monographs, contributed reference books, and contributed funded chapters.
Collection – A collection of similarly developed and reviewed publications of a similar format funded by the same funder or published by the same publisher.
Documentation – Documentation about a program, product, or service of the National Library of Medicine.
Database – A database is a collection of individual records (often categorized by subject matter) that are most often standardized in both format and content. LiverTox and LactMed are the main databases for toxicology content in the NCBI Bookshelf.
Where does Toxicology content in Bookshelf come from?
The NCBI Bookshelf does not author or publish toxicology content. Instead, it collaborates with scholarly and non-commercial publishers, such as government agencies and NGOs, to make this content accessible and discoverable through its full-text repository.
Some of the main contributors of toxicology assessments, reviews, and reports in Bookshelf include the following agencies. You can use the corresponding PubMed query to find their selected indexed full-text content in PubMed:
Discovery by Format
Bookshelf Format Queries
The following queries help you find reference information indexed in Bookshelf that match formats in scope for Bookshelf. You can refine these queries by combining them with other Bookshelf reference queries relevant to your search.
These queries were developed to help users find relevant content based on MeSH publication types or other formats that are meaningful to users and significant to the Bookshelf collection.
Textbooks & Reference Works Discovery Guide
Textbooks and reference works are the most heavily accessed content in Bookshelf, a trend that has remained consistent throughout Bookshelf’s history. In fact, Bookshelf began in 1999 with Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell to provide high-quality reference information to support the understanding of original studies and reviews indexed in PubMed.
What do textbooks & reference works mean in Bookshelf?
While there is significant overlap between the two, textbooks in Bookshelf are primarily edited for educational purposes, while reference works include contributed monographs, edited works, or collections of structured reviews with multiple contributors. These references works are used for research, education, and health professional practice.
How to find textbooks & reference works in Bookshelf?
Using Advanced Search
To start exploring textbooks or reference works within NCBI Bookshelf, follow these steps in the advanced search feature.
Step 1: Change the “Builder” drop-down menu to “Resource Type”
Step 2: Click “Show index list”
Step 3: Select “textbooks” or “reference works” from the list
Browsing titles by subjects
NCBI Bookshelf offers a variety of textbooks that can be navigated by subject. To browse these textbooks:
Step 1: Navigate to “Browse Titles”
Step 2: Enter search term for the subject of interest
Step 3: Select ‘Book’ from the Types menu
Clinical Guidelines and Systematic Reviews Discovery Guide
Bookshelf has an extensive collection of clinical guidelines and systematic reviews.
What are Clinical Guidelines and Systematic Reviews?
Clinical guidelines assist the health care practitioner with patient care decisions about appropriate diagnostic, therapeutic, or other clinical procedures for specific clinical circumstances. Trustworthy clinical guidelines are evidence-based and meet the standards of the Institute of Medicine. The evidence on which guidance is based is often published as one or more related systematic review.
Systematic reviews are reviews of the primary literature in health and health policy that attempt to identify, appraise, and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets specified eligibility criteria to answer a given research question. Its conduct uses explicit methods aimed at minimizing bias to produce more reliable findings regarding the effects of interventions for prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation that can be used to inform decision making.
How can I find Clinical Guidelines and Systematic Reviews in Bookshelf?
Using Advanced Search
To start exploring clinical guidelines or systematic reviews within NCBI Bookshelf, follow these steps:
Step 1: Change the “Builder” drop down menu to “Resource Type”
Step 2: Click “Show index list”
Step 3: Select “clinical guidelines” and/or “systematic reviews” from the list
This will result in the following query: "clinical guidelines"[Resource Type] OR "systematic reviews"[Resource Type]
Discovery by Programmatic Access
About 75% of the clinical guidelines and systematic reviews in the Bookshelf collection are also available for mining and reuse through Bookshelf’s FTP service. To locate a specific title or set of clinical guidelines or systematic reviews via this service, refer to this file list updated monthly.
Each list entry includes the following information:
- The fully qualified name of the .tar.gz file for a book, with directory structure
- Citation details:
- Book title
- Publisher
- Publication date
- The accession number for the title, a unique, persistent ID that can be used to display it in Bookshelf
- Last updated (YY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)
- Bookshelf Categories
- Bookshelf Queries and Discovery Guides - Bookshelf HelpBookshelf Queries and Discovery Guides - Bookshelf Help
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