On Doctoring MEDLINE searches, with reference librarian comments, March 2000

The question was

Articles concerning ganglioneuroma and vasoactive polypeptide levels

1     Ganglioneuroma/ and Vasoactive intestinal peptide/    results=12   
2     limit 1 to human    results=12   
3     from 2 keep 1-4,8-9,12    results= 7   
4     from 2 keep 12    results= 1   
5     from 2 keep 12    results= 1   

Reference Librarian comments

There isn't too much literature on this, is there...? You found the twelve that there are (at least in the 1991-to-date MEDLINE file). But I'd like to urge you to separate the concepts in future searches.

Try to think like this:

"I'll first make a set with vasoactive intestinal peptide references.
And then I'll make a set with references about ganglioneuroma.
And then I'll combine the first two sets with the "AND" feature, to get the intersection of those sets.
And then maybe I'll limit to human and English..."

Thanks for participating in the exercise...

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Search History
Results
1
exp Vasoactive intestinal peptide/
3396
2
exp ganglioneuroma/
382
3
1 and 2
12
4
from 3 keep 1-10
10