Finding Health Care Articles Step-by-Step

Transcription

1 Finding Health Care Articles Step-by-Step The Regis Library web page is at To find health care journal articles, click Research by Subject. This will bring you to the list of Regis Libraries resources that can be useful for research in different subjects. Click on Health Care. You can also go directly to Jan Loechell Turner, Reference Librarian /19/2011

2 2 The search box can be a good place to start your search for articles. You can use that box to search articles in the databases, Academic Search Premier and MEDLINE. If you would like to search other databases or more than just two databases at a time, click the Articles & Databases tab. Click here! For this search, we will click the EBSCOhost link so we can search multiple databases at the same time. If you are off-campus, you will be prompted for your RegisNET username and password. If you have forgotten your password, contact Regis ITS at

3 3 Let s choose (check-mark) the Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete, CINAHL (the nursing index), and MEDLINE (medical article citations from PubMed) databases. Click Continue. SAVING ARTICLES TO A FOLDER IN MY EBSCOHOST Before you start a search, it is important to login to your EBSCOhost account. If you do not have one, create a My EBSCOhost account now so when you save articles to your folder, they will stay there instead of disappearing from the folder when you leave the database. Click Sign In.

4 4 Click Create a new Account and fill out the form. Whenever you are logged in to your account, you can permanently save items to your folder and access them at a later date by logging in and clicking the yellow folder icon. You can also save and re-run your search strategies. Enter the requested information and click the Save Changes button. Then go back to the EBSCOhost search screen. SEARCHING FOR ARTICLES The EBSCOhost search engine searches a number of fields in the journal article records including titles, abstracts, and subject headings. Once you perform a search, the results (a list of article citations and abstracts) will be displayed. Many include the PDF file of the full-text article. Others have a link, Check for Full Text. This link activates the Regis journal linker to check the other Regis Library databases and journal collections for the full text article. If the full-text article is not found, the Login to Interlibrary Loan link will allow you to request the article from one of our partner libraries. If it is available, you will receive a link to the PDF file of the article. This free service usually takes about 3 days but may take longer.

5 5 Let s search for articles on vitamin D deficiency. We selected the databases Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete, CINAHL, and MEDLINE, so all of these databases will be searched at the same time. Enter your topic (vitamin D deficiency) in the search box, leave the right-hand box at Select a Field, and click the Search button. More than 20,000 results were retrieved. It is time to narrow our search by adding another concept. Let s use elderly as our second concept. The article above deals with vitamin D deficiency in the elderly. There are many words that mean elderly. Let s take a look at the title, abstract, and subjects to get ideas for other words that we can use as synonyms for elderly. We can see above that the words gerontology, older, and aged were used.

6 6 In the second search box we will enter elderly and its synonyms: (elderly OR gerontology OR older OR aged). These words are connected by the operator OR so EBSCOhost understands that the results must contain ANY (but not necessarily all) of the words that mean elderly (elderly OR gerontology OR older OR aged). When using the operator OR in a search statement, it is a good idea to include parentheses around the search statement. We will keep the drop-down menu on the left at AND so EBSCOhost will search for the words in the first box AND at least one of the words in the second box (elderly OR gerontology OR older OR aged). After entering the terms in the box, click the Search button. This time, 5,347 articles were found, compared to over 20,000 in the initial search. Results are displayed by relevance rather than by date. The Relevance Sort pull-down menu can be changed to date order. If we still have too many articles (and in the case above, we do), we could reduce our results even further by adding another concept (for example, we might add the term sunlight or the term cancer) in the third box. To add another search box, you can use the Add Row link to the right of the third search box.

7 7 LIMITING THE RESULTS TO SCHOLARLY ARTICLES PUBLISHED WITHIN THE PAST 5 YEARS On the left side of the results screen is the blue Refine your results section. Check-mark the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals box. Next, fill in the date range (for example, ) and click Update. Note: If you wish to add additional limiters, such as English language, you can click the Show more link to the right of the Update box for additional choices. Note: Another way to add limiters is by clicking Advanced Search under the bottom search box; whenever you click the Advanced Search link to add more limiters, it will erase your original limiters. Do NOT click Full Text! It turns off the Regis Full Text Article Linker. Now we are down to 1,200 results. This is a lot. We would probably want to add another concept to narrow the search. Twenty results are displayed per page and they are displayed by relevance so you may want to scan the first page or two to determine if the results really are what you want and also to get ideas for narrowing the search.

8 8 SAVING ARTICLES TO YOUR FOLDER To save an article to your folder, click the Add to folder icon under the abstract. You can scroll down and add other articles to your folder. The next time you return to your Folder, the articles that you saved will be there as long as you signed it to your My EBSCOhost account when you added the articles. You must sign in to your account to view them. Click the yellow Folder icon at the top of the screen (or go to Folder View) to view the list of items contained in your folder.

9 9 The folder contains the articles that you added. If you click the title of the article, you will see more detail about the article. The author(s) will be listed, the title of the journal and its abbreviation, subject headings that were used to describe the article, and other fields such as language, evidence based practice, research, or journal subsets. FINDING THE FULL-TEXT ARTICLE The articles in your folder will either contain a PDF (or html) Full Text file of the full-text article or will have a Check for full text link if the article is not full-text in EBSCO but may be full-text in one of the other Regis databases or journal collections.

10 10 Click the Check for full text link to search for the full-text article. The Check for full text Regis article linker found the full text article in Regis Library s Wiley-Blackwell journal collection. Click the Article link to connect to the PDF full text file. If the article was not available, you would click the Interlibrary Loan Login to request that our ILL department obtain the article from another library. Usually it takes around 3 days for the PDF file to arrive. After clicking on Article, you are connected to the PDF file link. Click Get PDF.

11 11 You must have the free Adobe software to open the PDF file. If you do not haveadobe Reader (or the most recent version), contact ITS at (or and they will instruct you how to download the software. To print or save the article, run your cursor over the screen and a dark gray box will pop up and display the icons to print or save the article to your computer. Save Print CONVERTING YOUR CITATIONS TO APA CITATION STYLE IN EBSCOHOST From your EBSCOhost folder, you can convert your citations to APA style.

12 12 Click the Select box to select all of the articles in your folder. Next click the printer icon on the right side of the page. Use the pull-down menu to select APA (American Psychological Association) Citation style. This is what EBSCOhost came up with. It is always important to check the references for errors. It is hard to view this screenshot, but you can highlight and copy and paste it into an MS Word document.

13 13 References Shepherd, A. (2009). Nutrition through the life span. Part 3: adults aged 65 years and over. British Journal of Nursing (BJN), 18(5), Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Cherniack, E., Florez, H. J., Hollis, B. W., Roos, B. A., Troen, B. A., & Levis, S. (2011). The response of elderly veterans to daily vitamin D3 supplementation of 2,000 IU: a pilot efficacy study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 59(2), doi: /j x Llewellyn, D., Lang, I., Langa, K., & Melzer, D. (2011). Vitamin D and cognitive impairment in the elderly U.S. population. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences & Medical Sciences, 66(1), Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Seamans, K., Hill, T., Scully, L., Meunier, N., Andrillo-Sanchez, M., Polito, A., &... Cashman, K. (2010). Vitamin D status and measures of cognitive function in healthy older European adults. European Journal Of Clinical Nutrition, 64(10), Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Errors in the references above (see circled items): They should be double-spaced and in Times New Roman 12 point font. They should be alphabetized by author (or if no author, by title). Delete Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Capitalize the first word of the subheading of the article title. Italicize the volume numbers (but not the issue number). 64(10) Corrected version (corrections are in bold): References Cherniack, E., Florez, H. J., Hollis, B. W., Roos, B. A., Troen, B. A., & Levis, S. (2011). The response of elderly veterans to daily vitamin D3 supplementation of 2,000 IU: A pilot efficacy study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 59(2), doi: /j x Llewellyn, D., Lang, I., Langa, K., & Melzer, D. (2011). Vitamin D and cognitive impairment in the elderly U.S. population. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences & Medical Sciences, 66(1), Seamans, K., Hill, T., Scully, L., Meunier, N., Andrillo-Sanchez, M., Polito, A., &... Cashman, K. (2010). Vitamin D status and measures of cognitive function in

14 14 healthy older European adults. European Journal Of Clinical Nutrition, 64(10), Shepherd, A. (2009). Nutrition through the life span. Part 3: Adults aged 65 years and over. British Journal of Nursing (BJN), 18(5), For more detailed information, see the Regis Library handout, APA Citation format in EBSCOhost at SAVING YOUR SEARCH HISTORY (the steps of your search strategy) It is possible to save your search strategy (search history) or list of searches in your EBSCOhost account. Click the Search History/Alerts link below the bottom search box. Click Save Searches/Alerts.

15 15 You can give your search a title and save your search so you can re-run it later. You can also save it as an alert and have EBSCOhost run the search for you every week, month, etc. To see your search history in the future, you would enter your EBSCOhost account. You would do this by going into the EBSCOhost from the Health Services Administration Research page and selecting the databases you searched. Once you are at the EBSCOhost search screen, click on Sign In To My EBSCOhost and enter your username and password. Click on the History/Alerts link. This will bring up your saved searches. Click on the Retrieve Searches link to view the list of saved searches.

16 16 Click on the Retrieve Saved Search link to re-run the search and bring up a list of current and past results. For help using the library website and databases, contact a librarian at or library@regis.edu (the Regis Library Reference Desk). Click the Ask Us link on the library website to send an or use the after hours instant message (chat) service.