What is MeSH?

MeSH is the acronym for Medical Subject Headings, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles for MEDLINE/PubMed.

MeSH Terms are particularly powerful search tools. They are added to the PubMed information about the article by trained indexers at the National Library Medicine. Using the correct MeSH Term can help you find all the articles on your subject.

This description of MeSH contains an image of a PubMed article record showing the MeSH Terms.

Here is the MeSH Database in PubMed.

Use the email form on the Ask a Librarian page to request to meet with a librarian to learn more about using MeSH to improve your PubMed search results.

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