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  Office: FLITE 315
 

English 321 Research Guide



Helpful Sites for Finding Paper Topics

  • Physician's First Watch Archives: These stories are brought to you by the producers of the New England Journal of Medicine
  • Reuters Health Headlines: You will default to today's headlines, but can pull down on the date menu to see previous headlines
  • FDA MedWatch Archives: Learn about drug safety alerts that may pique your interest
  • Cochrane Library: In this database, you can click in the blue Browse bar on By Review Group, and scroll down the screen to see the various protocols and reviews. A Withdrawn review may have a good topic to consider because it may have been withdrawn because of lack of updates, or possibly a protocol change.


    • Annotated Bibliography Help

    Guides to creating annotated bibliographies:

    Article Review Help

    Guides to creating annotated bibliographies:
    • How to Review a Book by Ashley Thompson: Although for reviewing a book, there are a lot of good tips available here for your article review
    • How to Review An Article: These are guidelines for reviewers from the Journal of Marriage and Family
      • .


    Citation Help



    Finding Articles

    You can go to the Library Homepage, use the Find pull-down menu from the top of the screen, and select Articles to see a listing of various subject areas. To find good information, you must select the right database from the listings to find on-topic information. When using the databases to find articles from off-campus, simply use your MyFSU username and password to log-on.

    Some databases you may want to search to find articles include:

    General OneFile
    This is a general database that will be useful for searching about any topic you can come up with! The default search is a Subject Guide Search, allowing you to search one topic at a time. In the subject guide search, a search on Nurse Administrators will bring up over 900 results that you can narrow by Subdivision. If you are having difficulties finding the proper subject term, switch to the Basic Search or Advanced Search and perform a keyword search. Also use the Basic Search or Advanced Search if combining search terms. In the Advanced Search you can limit your articles to particular journals, as well as to full-text, peer-reviewed, etc.

    Click here for a General OneFile Database Guide.

    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 on various topics. When you have found your subject heading, you may click on it to break your topic down by subdivision. For example, you may wish to search the CINAHL Headings for Nurse managers or Nurse Administrators, then Search Database with the selected term and subheading.

    To get the full text of the articles, you will need to click on the Find It link. For more information on getting the full text of articles, see the Obtaining the Full-Text of Articles section below.

    PubMed
    This is the largest biomedical database, with over 18 million citations. Because the database is so large, you may want to use the Advanced Search or Limits tab to narrow your search. Consider using the bottom pull-down menu from the Advanced Search or Limits tab to limit your keywords to being searched in only the Title or Title and Abstract. Make the Related Articles link your friend - it works very well for finding similar articles once you have found a relevant article.

    To get the full text of the articles, you must click into the PubMed record, then click on the Find It link. For more information on getting the full text of articles, see the Obtaining the Full-Text of Articles section below.
    Click here for a PubMed tutorial.


    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. See image below.

    Sample Article Link-Out:





    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.


    More Library Links



    Library Homepage
    Find Articles using databases.
    Find Journals in the online catalog's journals tab.
    Find books, videos, and other library holdings using the online catalog.


    Why Use PubMed instead of MEDLINE at Ferris

    FLITE currently does not subscribe to a full-text version of MEDLINE. If you are affiliated with an institution that offers a full-text version of MEDLINE, then certainly take advantage of the full-text available through that resource. Keep in mind though that PubMed contains pre-publication information and has many helpful resources for pharmacists NOT found in MEDLINE, including select resources such as:

    • Single Citation Matcher: Have a vague or questionable citation? Use this resource to track down health-related citations using the information that you know to be correct.
    • Clinical Queries: Need a systematic review (ie meta-analysis) to get evidence-based medicine answers? Use the Find Systematic Reviews feature and get highly-regarded information on a topic.
    • Toxnet: Search databases for information on toxicology, hazardous substances, etc.
    • Consumer Health: Use this link to go to Medline Plus and find links to trusted consumer health-information. These resources have been selected by the National Library of Medicine; therefore they should contain RELIABLE information
    • Clinical Alerts: Stay on top of medical advisories and alerts!!
    • Clinical TrialsFind out what clinical trials are available for various diseases and what institutions are participants,etc.


    Starting your PubMed Search using the MeSH Database to Get More On-topic Results

    With MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), articles that are on the same topic, but may have used different keywords, are categorized under a common term. For example, if you wanted articles on inoculations, also called vaccinations, articles on either topic would be categorized under one central MeSH term: vaccination.

    • For more information on using MeSH, please click here for links to tutorials.


    How to Limit Your Results in PubMed, Especially after Keyword Searching

    • Limits tab: Use this tab to limit your search to only English language articles, certain publication types, or to search keywords only in the title using the Default Tag Title designator located at the bottom of the limits screen
    • Related articles link: When you find an article that is very much on topic, use the related articles link to pull up articles with very similar topical coverage
    • Review tab: This will show you only review articles (articles where somebody has reviewed multiple resources on a topic and written an overview based on the literature reviewed). Remember, not all review articles are created equally, so consider using the Clinical Queries Find Systematic Reviews function to pull-up highly regarded meta-analyses, guidelines, etc.


    Guides to help you use PubMed more effectively



    Any more questions? Contact: Alison (Ali) Konieczny / Email / Phone: 231-591-3696 / Office: FLITE 315

    Don't forget, you are welcome to come to the Oval Information Desk and ask for help any time. You can also call us 231-591-3602 or chat with us.

    Last update: Feb. 2, 2009





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