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Skip to content NLM Musings from the Mezzanine Innovations in Health Information from the Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine Menu Home About U.S. National Library of Medicine Comments and Privacy Twitter Facebook NLM RSS Feeds The Engineering Marvel of the Panama Canal — and of NLM As you read this post, I’ll be on an adventure that’s been on my bucket list for 50 years: sailing through the Panama Canal! I’ve wanted to make this journey ever since I learned that my dad , who was a transportation engineer during World War II, passed through the Panama Canal. I’m looking forward to a more relaxing experience, on a voyage that I’ll be sharing with friends. As I prepared for this trip, I considered the Panama Canal’s interesting geography and geopolitical history. This 51-mile-long, lock-type canal cuts through the Isthmus of Panama to connect the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Originally begun by the French in 1881, the canal was completed by the United States and opened to shipping traffic in 1914. Now controlled by Panama, the canal has three lanes, through which over 15,000 ships pass each year. The American Society of Civil Engineers named the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world because of the amazing engineering effort it required. A recent book by Marixa Lasso, Erased , adds perspective to the story by describing the history and culture of the communities in that region prior to, and after, the canal’s construction. Although many techniques were developed to manage the massive excavation projects, the flow of water, and the raising and lowering of ships through the system of locks, most of them — as well as the people of the area — are invisible to travelers enjoying the sights from the shipboard viewing areas. In a way, the National Library of Medicine is also an engineering wonder whose underlying framework remains mostly hidden from view. To produce the Library’s suite of offerings, which reach millions of people each day, we rely on modern information engineering methods and techniques. Our software engineers devise programs to shorten the turnaround time for responses to queries and deposits of new genomic sequences. Effective engineering approaches are also needed to track the number of PubMed searches and deliver the results as quickly as possible. And to be certain that the advances we make in one area of the Library’s operations don’t disrupt activities in others, we have a team of project managers and program coordinators who monitor all those efforts. In addition to relying on the staff who maintain and improve NLM’s information technology, we depend on a building engineer and engineering staff to keep our physical plant operating. NLM is one of only three Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health that are responsible for their own buildings. Our two on-campus buildings , known as Building 38 and Building 38A, provide space for almost 1,000 people. Building 38 has three above-ground floors, with two additional below-ground floors to hold our stacks of journals, serials, and books, and Building 38A has 13 floors in total. So it takes a dedicated staff to make sure that the elevators and HVAC systems function and that work spaces and lighting are conducive to efficient and effective performance. People around the world benefit from the vision and hard work of all types of engineers, just as people around the world benefit from NLM’s offerings. So the next time you search ClinicalTrials.gov , find an important citation in PubMed , read a full-text article through PubMed Central , or submit a proposal for review by our grants program , give a nod of thanks to our engineers. NLM wouldn’t be the same without them! Tweet Email Print More Share on Tumblr Like this: Like Loading... Author Patti Brennan Posted on January 28, 2020 January 28, 2020 1 Comment on The Engineering Marvel of the Panama Canal — and of NLM A New and Improved PubMed® Guest post by Bart Trawick, PhD, director of the Customer Services Division at the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health. NLM’s PubMed has long been recognized as a critical resource for helping researchers, health care professionals, students, and the general public keep current with rapid advances in the life sciences. We are excited to introduce an updated version of PubMed that features an updated design and technology to improve the user experience. Launched in 1996 as an experimental website, PubMed has provided an easy, effective way to search a large portion of the published biomedical literature free of charge. The importance of PubMed is evidenced by its heavy use. Each day, more than 2 million people use PubMed to search a corpus of more than 30 million abstracts and citations, making it one of the most frequently used U.S. government websites. While PubMed has always been viewed as a valuable and effective resource, we regularly ask ourselves, “How can we improve it?” A History of Listening Over the past 24 years, we have continuously updated and refined PubMed to keep pace with ever-changing information technologies and added features and enhancements to make it easier for users to find relevant information quickly. Along the way, we made two major updates to the web interface (one in 2000 and another in 2010) and introduced a separate mobile version of PubMed, in 2011. Several important factors make these advances possible: strong leadership at NLM, talented development teams, and publisher partners who provide not only content but also feedback on how to improve the intake and presentation of the content. However, the most important factor is the many users who access PubMed and then take the time to tell us how we can improve it. Kicking It up a Notch In early 2017, we launched a comprehensive effort to take PubMed to the next level. Our goal was to transform PubMed into a modern hub with a fast, reliable, intuitive search that connects people to the world’s leading sources of biomedical information. In order to connect people to the information they seek, you need to have a great retrieval engine. Under the leadership of NLM’s Zhiyong Lu, PhD , and his team, we enhanced the retrieval engine, using advanced machine-learning technology to develop a new relevance search algorithm . This algorithm optimizes the quality of top-ranked results and is used by PubMed’s new Best Match feature for sorting search results. On the technology side, we have a completely new chassis. We’ve moved to an open-source search platform which our Operations and DevOps teams were critical in moving to the cloud, providing greater scalability and reliability. And to deliver the best possible experience, our front-end developers produced a modern, responsive website that is optimized for the needs of today’s information seeker. To truly understand the needs of PubMed users — and how best to deliver solutions that meet those needs — we needed you . Together with our friends from 18F , we engaged with a broad array of users; analyzed customer service data; reviewed survey responses; and tested dozens of design solutions and enhancements with expert PubMed users, novices, and everyone in between. If there was one thing we learned during this effort, it was that our initial assumptions and ideas weren’t always right — reinforcing that we must continue to listen to our users and make iterative improvements. Trying Out the New PubMed We invite you to experience the latest version of PubMed for yourself! Are you looking for the most relevant papers in a given area? Try the Best Match sort option. Are you writing a grant proposal or peer-reviewed manuscript? We expect that the Cite button will come in quite handy. Are you a power user constructing a systematic review? The Advanced Search workflow has been updated to be more intuitive and flexible. Do you need to access PubMed while away from your ...