Life sciences are a closely intermeshed field of knowledge. Demographic change, global warming and diseases of affluence are just some examples of topics which cannot be neatly pigeon-holed in a single discipline. To enable its customers to take a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach to searching for literature, ZB MED has now merged its two existing search portals MEDPILOT and GREENPILOT into a joint portal known as LIVIVO. This new portal enables users to search all ZB MED's subject areas simultaneously. And searches are not limited to ZB MED's own stocks – LIVIVO searches through some 55 million data records from more than 45 specialist databases.

"Our goal wasn't just to bring all our life science subject areas together, but also to improve the search technology to give users even more accurate results," says Ulrich Korwitz, Director of ZB MED. The new search technology uses specialist ontologies from the life sciences which are integrated in the search portal. So as well as finding specific terms and groups of words, the portal also returns hits containing alternative word forms, synonyms and abbreviations – not just in English, but in multiple languages. Users can also filter their results by the subject areas of medicine/health, nutrition, the environment and agriculture.

"User-friendliness was one of the key things we focused on," says Korwitz. Working closely with ZB MED target groups from the realms of research and education, the developers completely overhauled the user interface of the existing portals and tailored it to users' requirements.

The list of search results in LIVIVO offers additional information on how users can access the texts and other related materials. Wherever possible, links are provided to freely accessible sources and full texts in order to promote the concept of open access. Where available, articles also feature links to the research data they are based on.  

LIVIVO has also been designed to identify which journals are licensed and freely available at the respective search location (e.g. on a university campus). Users can also use LIVIVO to request the delivery of documents directly from ZB MED using the library's document delivery service for its own stocks or its full service package for third-party holdings.

ZB MED's existing search portals MEDPILOT and GREENPILOT will stay online for the time being, but as soon as LIVIVO's initial test phase has been completed, they will be shut down. "So users will benefit from having a single search portal for all the life sciences – LIVIVO," says Korwitz.

Check out the LIVIVO search portal: www.livivo.de

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