PubMed Redesign 2009

There was an online presentation and q&a period on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009, about the proposed redesign of the primary PubMed pages. This was scheduled to be released this summer but is not up at this time yet.

My overall impression is certainly an improvement. It's a much simpler, streamlined and current design, which should ease public use and enjoyment of the product, both of which are rather important. There were the usual questions about functionality, but, as the presenter David Gillikin, Chief of NLM’s Bibliographic Services, repeatedly pointed out, this is an upgrade of design only. Strict functionality will not be touched.

Krafty Librarian points out:

Since most of the "cool" or helpful things like Details, History, Citation Matcher are only available from the Advanced Search, many people may want to have a nice short cut straight to that area.

I would have to suggest that NLM considers adding random reminders if not fixed links to tools like this in with the boxes on the right "Related Articles", "Recent Activity", etc.

I love forward to the the release of the redesign. I can't wait to play around with it and explore. It certainly welcomes a bit of curiosity and playing more than the current interface. What do you think? Are you excited?

[ "PubMed Redesign 2009" presentation, 45 min, learned of from a Krafty Librarian blog entry ]