[Asis-l] LigerCat - A fun way to search PubMed

[Holly Miller]

LigerCat (http://ligercat.ubio.org) is a web application that allows a
researcher to search for articles in PubMed and then explore the
resulting set via the key words (MeSH descriptors) associated with the
result set.

 LigerCat facilitates the use of plain language queries or molecular
sequences to search the PubMed database for articles. Using keywords
it is also possible to search the National Library of Medicine’s
Journals database to find relevant journal titles and then explore the
keywords in articles published in those journals.

The search results are displayed as an occurrence-weighted tag cloud,
with the terms associated more articles presented in a larger font
size.

LigerCat also serves a Publication Data Histogram. In the Articles
Search a Publication History graph is displayed in addition to the
MeSH tag cloud. This is an interactive graph. Mousing over the graph
will highlight years and display the number of articles from that year
that your search retrieved. Clicking on the bar for that year performs
the search in PubMed and takes you to that result page. In the Genes
Search, the graph will not take you to PubMed but you still can see
how many articles related to the query sequence were published in each
year. It is also possible for users to copy a code snippet for users
to display a particular MeSH cloud on their own web page.

Please try out LigerCat. We are always happy to get feedback and
suggestions for improvement.



Thanks

Holly

--
Holly Miller, PhD MLIS
Director, MBLWHOI Library
Director, Data Analysis and Visualization Group
Associate Director, Center for Library and Informatics
Marine Biological Laboratory
7 MBL Street
Woods Hole, MA 02543 USA
voice: 508-289-7632
email: hmiller at mbl.edu