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Finding Medical-Legal Journal Articles |
Avoid plagiarism by properly citing your sources. Please go to the Citations webpage to learn how.
FLITE Databases
To find medical-legal information and other medical research articles, it is essential to use the appropriate databases that provide access to many citations and full-text articles. If you are doing research from off-campus, you will need to log-on to use databases licensed by FSU. Click here for information on off-campus database access. For most research topics, it is a good idea to start off by getting background information from reference books, such as encyclopedias. The electronic medical library Stat!Ref that searches the contents of many medical reference books is a great place to start searching for MOST health sciences topics (maybe not legal issues though). Also, check out the new collection of online encyclopedias available through the Electronic Reference Resources webpage. Of particular interest to HCSA, the Encyclopedia of Health Care Management is available online.
CINAHL
The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) currently gathers information from more than 1800 journals. Use the CINAHL Headings subtab to get more subject-specific information for your research topic. Once you have performed a search using the CINAHL Headings subtab, you can select the Refine Search tab and apply the Publication Type limit of "Legal Cases." If performing a Basic Search or Advanced Search using keywords, you can narrow and expand your search using the numerous options available in this database.
Click here for a CINAHL Database Guide.
General OneFile PubMed Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Westlaw Campus Obtaining the Full-Text of Articles
In some databases you will see an option for a Text version of the document or a PDF version. In general, the PDF version is preferable as it is most often a scanned version of the original and will therefore contain the graphics. When e-mailing, printing, or saving a group of articles, be sure to select the full-text or PDF option if available.
Some databases contain little full-text, but allow you to link out to Ferris' holdings or the interlibrary loan request form. You will notice the Find it! links following individual citations that will indicate the availability of the article online, in the library, or the need to interlibrary loan the article. Click on the Go button and you will be taken to the online version, library holdings record, or interlibrary loan form to obtain the article you desire.
Evaluating your Articles
Before requesting articles from interlibrary loan, please review the abstract and make sure that the article is on-topic. Also, please insure that the article is in a language that you speak, as some databases, such as PubMed index many non-English articles that have abstracts written in English. After you have evaluated the topical coverage and language of the article, please do not hesitate to request it through interlibrary loan if it is not available on campus.
Other Useful Library Links
Library Homepage
If you have any questions about what was covered in class, or
regarding using the library for research,
E-mail Alison
Also, please feel free to contact a reference librarian by visiting at the South Service Desk, or calling at 231-591-3602 or chatting with us live. Back | Library Home | Instruction Home
Last update: September 14, 2007
This is a general database that will be useful for searching many subject areas. Health Reference Center is a subset of General OneFile and operates in the same manner as General OneFile. For both General OneFile and Health Reference Center, the default search is a subject guide search. In the subject guide search you can only search one term at a time. If you are having difficulties finding the proper subject term, switch to the Basic Search or Advanced Search and perform a keyword search, then select a pertinent article to find the proper subject heading. Also use the Basic Search or Advanced Search if combining search terms. In the Advanced Search you can limit your articles to particular journals, full-text, peer-reviewed, etc. Also try Academic Onefile.
This is the largest biomedical database, with over 16 million citations. Try to use specific keywords rather than broad keywords to obtain information pertinent to your topic. If retrieving an overwhelming number of articles, use various options to limit your search that were discussed in class. These options for limiting your search include:
Legal Cases or Legislation are other helpful limits found under the Type of Article limits heading.
Click here for a PubMed Database Guide.
Using this database, you may wish to switch from the General search tab to the Legal search tab. Information in this database is available full-text online.
After agreeing to the terms of use, switch from the News & Business search tab to the Law search tab. You will have to select what resources you want to search. Focus your search in Journals and Law Reviews to find articles for your paper.
Find Articles in Databases: Choose your topic area, and proceed from there.
Find Journals: Look for journals by doing title, keyword, or subject searches.
Find library materials in the Online Catalog: Look for books, videos, and other library holdings.
APA Citation Style Guide: Learn basics about APA style, a prevalent citation format in the medical field.
RefWorks Tutorial: Need help using RefWorks? Check out this extensive tutorial that can assist you with using RefWorks. Don't miss the A-Z database exporting guide that will show you how to use all of the FLITE databases with RefWorks.
RefWorks Direct Link: Learn how to use this helpful citation management tool. Put citations in APA style, MLA, Chicago, etc. with RefWorks.
