NDC tutorial Basic search

Transcription

1 NDC tutorial Basic search The National Documentation Centre on Drug Use (or NDC for short) is a free, specialist library funded by the Department of Health, and based in the Health Research Board, Dublin. We provide access to Irish and international research and information resources on drugs, alcohol-misuse and tobacco. We also have publications on related subjects such as poverty, suicide, prisons, homelessness, crime, education, social care, and health. Our collection includes research on: Illicit drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, cannabis, stimulants, hallucinogens and new psychoactive substances; and the misuse of other substances such as alcohol, medication, steroids and solvents. To search our collection click search on the orange toolbar. This is our basic search page where you can search all articles, reports, evidence resources, conference items, parliament debates, books and book chapters in our collection. You have 3 options. You can search the title, subject or all fields of our documents. Title field The first field is title here you can type in one or more words that you might expect in the title of a publication. The title field is very precise and usually brings back very relevant results. However, be selective, start with one or two keywords. If you type in too many words you will restrict the number of results returned. To view a record, click on its title. If the results are not what you expected then click return to search page 1

2 If there are more than 20 items returned in a publication type then you have the option to see all. This brings you into results for that particular publication type e.g. evidence resources. Reorder your results You have the option to reorder your results. By default, the most recent items will be shown first but you can view your results with the oldest first, alphabetically, by title, or author. Refine / new search To return to your original search results, click the back button on your browser. Alternatively, if the results are not what you expected, you can begin a new search or refine your current search The refine search brings you back to the search page, where you can add or take away search terms or item types. Remember that when doing a title search the database will only look for the specific words you type in, so for example, brief intervention will bring results with those words in the title but will miss documents with alternative wording, or chapters on brief interventions. This is why we have a subject search option. Subject field The Subjects field is like a keyword search. When we add a new document to our collection we check to see what it is about and we assign specific subjects to it. So doing a subject field search for brief intervention will capture all relevant publications even if not described as such in the title. Browse subjects To see a full list of the subjects we use, click on the subject terms link. 2

3 These subjects and their organisational structure are taken from a special thesaurus. Where you see AOD this is a common acronym meaning alcohol and other drugs Each of these main headings has sub-headings. So if you click on AOD use, abuse and dependence - you can see it is divided into smaller subjects If you want to browse through documents for a subject, click on a heading. Clicking on National Documentation Centre will bring you back to the top-level list. Browsing subjects in this way provides a useful overview of our collection. However it may be quicker and easier to search by subject. All fields The final option is an all fields search. As its name suggests, this is a search of all fields in the database including the title, subject, author, abstract, publisher, and so on. This is useful if you are doing a large, comprehensive review or when searching for an unusual term. It is likely to bring back a large number of results, so use sparingly. One final note You may have used the all fields search because the term you searched for didn t produce many results using the other fields. For example instead of alcoholism we would use the subject alcohol dependence. If you find one or two relevant publications, it may be worth looking at their subjects You can click on any of these to see other similar publications. 3

4 So now we will go back to the simple search page to explain one final element. 4

5 All of / Any of In all of these examples we used the default option all of. This means that the search was for documents where both words were mentioned. There are occasions where you might want to use any of, especially in a title search. The first is to account for the differences in American and English spelling. To take an example If we type the UK English spelling of foetal in the title field.. We would get results with only that spelling in our results. If we typed the American spelling we would get different results So, if we add both spellings and choose any of. Both versions will be picked up in our results. Another example of when any of is useful is where a word has variations or synonyms. If we use the term homeless and homelessness and choose any of.. We get results with either term Advanced search For a more detailed or comprehensive search click advanced search This will give you more search and browse options. This completes the basic search tutorial Summary Keep your searches short just one or two words. Perhaps start with a title search to get the most relevant results However, remember to think about synonyms or related words, also think about American/English spelling Perhaps do a follow-up subject search to capture all related documents. Subjects are like keywords that we add to each document s record. You can also browse by subject to get an overview of our collection. Use the all fields search field if you are searching for an unusual term or your other searches don t yield sufficient results. The All of / Any of options are used to narrow or expand your search (like And / Or ) 5