Literature Searching: The professional Way

• Basics about online databases • Brief overview of key databases for nursing • Expert searching • When enough information is enough

• MEDLINE -- The National Library of Medicine's (NLM) premier bibliographic database

• 2 platforms at UTHSC: OVIDSP/MEDLINE OVIDSP/MEDLINE and MEDLINE/PubMedMEDLINE/PubMed

• Subjects: Biomedicine (e.g., medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care system, and preclinical sciences)

• 18 + million references from approximately 5,500 worldwide journals

• Dating back to 1946

• CINAHL– Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health Literature

• @UTHSC: : CINAHL Plus with Full CINAHL Plus with Full TextText via EBSCOhost

• Subjects: nursing, biomedicine, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines

• 2+ million references to over 1200 journals

• Dating back to 1982

• Subjects: Behavioral and social sciences; psychiatry; neuroscience; and medical law & ethics.

• More than 3 million records and cover over 2450 worldwide journals

• Dating back to 1806

• ERIC – Education Resources Information Center

• Subjects: Education• Over 1.4 million bibliographic records covering

over 1162 journals, 76 book publishers, 106 federal agencies, etc.

• Dating back to 1966

• Subjects: Multi disciplines • Over 41 million records and cover 17,500

journals, 315 million scientific web pages, 24 million patent records, 300 book series, etc.

• Dating back to 1996

• MeSH – Medical Subject Headings• CINAHL Subject Headings• ERIC Thesaurus/Descriptors• Thesaurus of Psychological Index

Terms

• Effective communication

• More relevant and better search results

1. Go to PubMed from the library <http://library.uthsc.edu>

2. Enter the PubMed search box: 21495522

3. Identify MeSH terms4. Identify Major MeSH topics

Major TopicsMajor Topics

Diabetics AND Pregnancy

Headache OR Migraine

Music NOT Jazz

• How to communicate effectively with databases

• Scope of each database• Database indexing schemes• Search strategy • Proper search terms• Relationship among search terms• One search is never enough

You are asked to do a literature search on falls in elderly and their psychological adaptation.

("Accidental Falls"[Mesh]) AND "Adaptation, Psychological"[Mesh] Limits: English, Aged: 65+ years, 80 and over: 80+ years

("Accidental Falls"[Mesh] OR "Accidental Falls"[All Fields]) AND ("Adaptation, Psychological"[Mesh] OR "Psychological Adaptation"[All Fields]) AND (English[lang] AND ("aged"[MeSH Terms] OR "aged, 80 and over"[MeSH Terms]))

• To get more relevant and focused results,

start your search with subject headings

• Use keyword searching if no subject headings are found

• Attach subheadings to major headings for specific searches

• What is your destination?

• What are you

doing with the

information?

• Dissertation: Thorough and exhaust all the resources

• Drug effects: Comprehensive• Grant proposal: A few good articles to provide

adequate justifications• Course assignment: A few good articles to get

the work done

Practice makes perfect!

Focus on what you are doing. If you don't know what you are doing, you will never know when information is enough.

Understand what you need. If you don't understand what you need, you will never know when information is enough.

lwu5@uthsc.edu(901) 447-1776

Toll free: 1-877-747-0004