An Evaluation of the NLM Gateway Using the European Commission Glossary: A Descriptive Study

Abstract The NLM Gateway is an online system provided by National Library of Medicine (NLM) to search multiple retrieval systems simultaneously. In this preliminary study, we evaluated the NLM Gateway for its coverage of popular term-technical term mappings as contained in the European Commission English Medical Glossary. The Gateway did not map over half of the popular terms to MeSH headings. Those that mapped were not mapped to MeSH synonyms of their technical counterparts in the Glossary. However, the mappings provided by the Gateway were often as reasonable as the mappings provided by the glossary.