Nursing 621: Library Resources for Clinical Nursing Research

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Nursing 621Library Resources for Clinical
Nursing Research

• Heather Ganshorn, MLIS
• January 21, 2002

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Todays Presentation

• Developing a search strategy
• Keyword vs. subject searching
• Advanced Medline/CINAHL features
• Grey literature resources
• Ingenta (Table of Contents service)
• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
• Locating e-journals
• Document Delivery
• QA from students

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Building a Search Strategy

• Put your research topic into a concise statement
  or question, and identify key terms
• What knowledge do rural teens have of STDs?
• Brainstorm for synonyms (if the database doesnt
  have subject mapping)
• Combine terms with Boolean logic (OR, AND)

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Boolean Logic OR

• ORfind ANY of the terms
• teens or adolescents finds records containing
  either term
• use OR to combine synonyms or related concepts
• OR broadens a search, increases results

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Boolean Logic -- AND

• ANDfind ALL of the terms
• rural and teens will find articles that focus
  on teens in rural areas
• AND narrows a search, brings back fewer results
• Order of operations Do your OR searches first,
  then combine sets using AND

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Truncation (Wildcards)

• You can search for multiple word endings by using
  a truncation symbol (,,?)
• Medline and the catalogue use , most other
  online databases use
• Examples
• treat searches for treating, treatment, treats,
  etc.
• drug searches for drug, drugs, drugged, etc.

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Keyword Search Looks Like

• rural
• AND
• (teen OR adolescent)
• AND
• (knowledge OR awareness)
• AND
• (STDs OR sexually transmitted diseases)

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Keyword vs. Subject Searching

• Keyword Searching
• Searches the text of the record for the words you
  input
• Advantage
• allows you to search for terms that dont appear
  on the subject headings list, often because they
  are too new
• Disadvantages
• You must think of synonyms, alternate spellings,
  alternate word endings
• Some words have more than one meaning
• Just because the word appears in the abstract,
  doesnt mean its the focus of the article

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Keyword vs. Subject contd.

• Subject Searching (usually best and most precise)
• Some indexes use a list of predetermined subject
  headings, assigned to articles on that topic
• Advantages
• One subject heading is chosen to represent a
  concept no need to think of synonyms
• An indexer has assigned the term, so you know the
  article is actually about that subject
• Disadvantages
• New concepts are not on subject list
• Most indexes have no subject headings, or poor
  ones

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Medline/CINAHL Subject Headings

• Hierarchy
• broader and narrower terms
• Canada
• Alberta
• Edmonton
• Calgary
• Montgomery
• Scenic Acres
• British Columbia
• Use Explode to include narrower, related terms

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Medline/CINAHL Todays Passwords

• Go to gateway.ovid.com
• UserID hkncaltrain
• Password training
• Select the last MEDLINE on the list (1966 to
  December week 3 2002)
• Note The web site is only for todays training.
  In future, access Medline from the librarys
  Article Indexes page.

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MEDLINE/CINAHL Search Tips

• Search one concept at a time, then combine your
  result sets using AND, OR.
• If a subheading is directly applicable, select
  it. If no subheadings are exactly what you want,
  click select all
• Use the limits below the search box
• Articles labelled review summarize current
  research. Use their bibliographies to locate
  other articles.

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Grey Literature Resources

• Grey Literature is
• Printed works such as reports, internal
  documents, PhD dissertations, master's theses,
  and conference proceedings, not usually available
  through regular market channels because they were
  never commercially published, listed, or priced
• from the Online Dictionary of Library and
  Information Science

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Grey Literature Dissertations

• Use ProQuest Digital Dissertations (the online
  version of Dissertations Abstracts)
• Listed under our Article Indexes
• Masters and PhD theses
• Can download the full text of any thesis done at
  U of C for free
• Theses done at other places can be downloaded for
  a fee
• Recent theses have a free 25-page preview

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Grey Literature Conference Papers and
Proceedings

• Under Article Indexes, use Papers First to search
  for individual conference papers, then check the
  catalogue to see if we have the journal or book
  of proceedings they were published in
• Use Proceedings First to search for proceedings
  (collections of papers from a particular
  conference), then check catalogue to see if we
  have them
• We dont carry many conference proceedings, but
  may be able to get them on inter-library loan

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Grey Literature Government Documents

• Canadian Research Index for federal and
  provincial government documents
• GPO Monthly Catalog for U.S. government documents
• NTIS Reports for technical and scientific reports
  commissioned by U.S. Government (has a special
  category for health reports)
• Check our catalogue to see if we own documents
  if not, we can get them on interlibrary loan

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Ingenta

• Table of Contents Service
• Select your favourite journals, and have the
  table of contents e-mailed to you each time a new
  issue comes out
• See handout for how to set up a personal profile
  and select journals

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Locating E-journals

• See handout
• Select Electronic Resources tab in Catalogue,
  search for nurs in Periodical Title field to get
  a list of online nursing journals

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Document Delivery

• See accompanying handout
• Do we need to go over Document Delivery
  procedures?

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Q A from Students

• What would you like to know more about?
• We can do sample searches in CINAHL/Medline if
  youd like