Thanks to all who responded to my request for a definition of an errant
code in Medline Dialog. All the replies were varied and that is because
without adequate translation somewhere on the system, we as librarians
rely on our expertise and experience of medlines across differing
interfaces. This is entirely right and proper because there is no easily
accessible translation table for us. I have requested more transparency
from Dialog but i do feel i am shouting in a force nine gale.
Here for all of you is the dialog team's response. This is what the 'W' in
dialog datastar means after a search term appears in your strategy and yes
i do get asked this question by my medical team (twice in the past week).
"The .w.command means that a term will be searched as a single word
descriptor, and not as part of a phrase. However, if a term is exploded,
this command will not be applied to any narrower terms which contain the
intial search term.
e.g. Myositis.w..de. will only search for this as a single word in the
descriptor field but Myositis#.w..de. will include the narrower term
myositis-inclusion-body".
regards
Katharine Wylie
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