Transcript Getting Started with Literature Searching

Stephanie J. Schulte, MLIS
Assistant Professor/Education and Reference Services
Coordinator
Prior Health Sciences Library
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Electronic texts: Core25 Books via Prior Web
site
Micromedex: Detailed drug information
UpToDate: Point of care answers to clinical
questions covering 7400 topics in 13
specialties. Available on campus only.
MDConsult: another point of care tool
available to you.
Mosby’s Nursing Skills; current policies,
procedures, and protocols
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Medline/PubMed (1950 forward)
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Millions of journal article citations
Mainly biomedical, some nursing though
Can do keyword searching or MeSH terms
Handy limits in EBSCO interface (found in Advanced
Search in PubMed): English, Humans, Nursing journal
subset, publication type (for specific kinds of studies)
CINAHL
 Focused on nursing and allied health
 Contains records for all kinds of content, not just
journal articles, so pay attention to the record
 Can do keyword searching or use CINAHL subject
headings
 Handy limits: date of publication, Research article,
many publication types
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Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
◦ Full-text systematic reviews
◦ Mostly medical topics (care issues not addressed as
much)
◦ Updated regularly
◦ Studies included are usually selected by rigorous
criteria
◦ You may find these in a PubMed search. You have
to go into the database itself to get the full text (the
Find It button doesn’t work in PubMed for these)
◦ Full text= EBP topic review
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Sociological Abstracts
◦ indexes 1800 journals covering sociology since
1974, and dissertations since 1986.
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PsychInfo
◦ International literature in psychology and related
disciplines. Includes journals and dissertations from
1967 to present; book chapters from 1987 to
present.
BOOLEAN OPERATORS: AND, OR, NOT
Using Boolean operators can make your searches more successful.
AND
Narrows and focuses your
search
Finds articles with all of the
terms connected by AND
Google does this
automatically, but many
databases require you to add
the term
Example: bone density AND
carbonated beverages
OR
NOT
Expands and broadens your
Rarely used
search
Narrows search by excluding a
Finds articles with one or
term
more of the terms connected
by OR
Use when there are several
terms used in the literature
for the same topic
Example: bone density OR
osteoporosis
Example: carbonated
beverages NOT soft drinks
PARENTHESES: These are useful for grouping terms so that certain terms are searched in the correct order. Just like
algebra, what appears on the inside of the parentheses is completed first before combining with the next set of terms.
Example: (bone density OR osteoporosis) AND (carbonated beverages OR soda OR pop)
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In the dehydrated elderly, is subcutaneous
hydration as effective as intravenous
hydration for restoring fluid balance?
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P
I
C
O
 A theoretical search strategy: (P OR P OR P) AND (I OR I
OR I) AND (C OR C OR C) AND (O OR O OR O)