The Cochrane Library

Transcription

1 LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICE The Cochrane Library Accessing the Cochrane Library The Cochrane Library is available at or in the Journals and Database section, and is THE best single source of reliable clinical evidence. If you find a systematic review that answers your question, you will be saved the work of searching databases for journal literature, as well as all the reading involved. So it s worth looking at Cochrane first! Finding Information You can either browse or search to find relevant material in the Cochrane Library. 1. Browse This is the simplest way to look for relevant items. Click on expand to see the full selection of topics A drop-down menu allows you to select a subject area. Click on increasingly specific topics until you get to links to individual records 2. Simple Search Use the search box at the top left of the screen. Enter free-text terms (i.e. words that you think of) and click Go. E.g. asthma and child The number of records found will be listed, with Cochrane Reviews being listed first. Browse the results and click Record to see the full-text. Click on one of the tabs at the top of the results list to see the results in other databases. 1

2 3. Advanced Search C lick the Advanced Search link underneath the search box. This screen will appear: This search form gives you flexibility in formulating your search. You can use the drop- down the search form, you have the option to limit the search to down menus to limit your search terms to different fields, e.g. the title, if you wish. Lower a date range. The Search button gives you the search results. Or, ticking Go directly to Search History before clicking Search shows your Search History. Viewing your Search History allows you to combine previous search sets to refine your search, e.g. #1 and #2. Clicking on the underlined search title takes you to the search results. 4. MeSH Search Searching MeSH index terms is the most comprehensive way of finding relevant items. MeSH stands for Medical Subject Headings: it is a thesaurus of index terms used by the Medline database. To do a MeSH Search, click the link under the home page search box or the link on the Advanced Search page. A search box will appear. Enter a term that you want to look up and click the Go to MeSH Trees button. 2

3 One of two things will happen: 1. A tree structure will appear as shown right. This shows the term you entered within its indexing hierarchy. 2. A message will appear, [term] not found in MeSH tree, trying MeSH Thesaurus, followed by a list of index terms. Click on the appropriate term to see the MeSH tree structure. In this example, AIDS is not a valid MeSH term but you are given suggestions for appropriate MeSH terms to use instead. Clicking Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome will take you to that MeSH tree. Looking at the Psoriasis tree above, you can see by the hierarchical structure that it is one of the Skin Diseases, Papulosquamous. Psoriasis itself has a narrower term: Arthritis, Psoriatic. Because the most specific index term possible is always assigned, an article about psoriatic arthritis will be indexed with the term Arthritis, Psoriatic and NOT Psoriasis. For this reason, you should always include the narrower terms in your search, if there are any. This is what Explode does for you. Note that the Explode option (to the left of the tree structure) is ticked by default. By clicking the View Results button, you will be exploding the MeSH term Psoriasis, i.e. searching articles indexed with Psoriasis as well as Arthritis, Psoriatic. Search History will indicate that explode has been done. Having found result sets using MeSH terms, you can combine them as described in Advanced Search. Modified from a document written by Geoff Fleet P:\Library Share\LIBRARY\Publications & Guides\COCHRANE LIBRARY\Cochrane Library Guide Jul 2012.doc 3

4 Viewing Search Results Search Results are listed in alphabetical order, with Cochrane Reviews listed first. Click OTHER REVIEWS, CLINICAL TRIALS, etc. to see the results from those databases. Instead of A-Z, you can list results by relevance (Match %) or Date = full review. = protocol (incomplete review). Browse through the titles. Click Record to view the full-text for an item. Note the publication date to see how upto-date the article is Click on tabs to navigate through the article View PDF The easiest way to view a Review is to open and print the PDF file. (You need Adobe Reader loaded on your computer to view PDF files.) Search Tips If you want to search a phrase, you must enter it with quotes, e.g. colon cancer, otherwise the words will be searched as colon AND cancer, which will give many irrelevant results. Plurals are automatically searched, so searching child will also find children. You can truncate terms by using *, e.g. depress* will find depression, depressive, depressed, etc. You can truncate at either end of a word or in the middle, e.g. *depress* also finds antidepressants. Some alternative spellings are automatically searched (e.g. tumor/tumour), but to be certain of catching them, use internal truncation, e.g. isch*mic to find ischaemic or ischemic. Use brackets to control the order in which the search executes, if you are using a combination of AND and OR, e.g. magnesium AND (eclampsia OR perinatal asphyxia). NEAR can be used instead of AND to narrow your search. e.g. smoking NEAR pregnancy will find the two words within 6 words of each other in either order, so it is more specific than using AND. NEAR/n will find the words within n words of each other in either order, e.g. NEAR/4. 4

5 Contact Details If you need help searching for information or accessing the electronic journals, please contact the Clinical Outreach Librarians at: Wilfred Stokes Library, Stoke Mandeville Hospital