Advanced Search Techniques for Health & Life Sciences
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Transcript Advanced Search Techniques for Health & Life Sciences
Advanced
Search
Techniques
for Health &
Life Sciences
This presentation will introduce you to advanced search techniqes for locating evidencebased scholarly resources for your subject area, including:
Resources Available via the Library Website
Finding books and journals- electronic & print
Searching
Developing a search strategy
Searching Scopus
Searching Medline
Additional suggested E-Resources:
RefWorks
Internet resources for public health
Using Pearltrees links for Global Public Health
Support
Questions
e-books (electronic books) via Discover
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes
Further e-book search options/ individual collections:
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/ebooks
Search, Browse, Print & download
Register for a profile within e-book databases/
search platforms such as Discover for...
Save items to your bookshelf
Highlight and make notes on the book, see our
guide on using a personal profile in Discover.
Electronic journals or e-journals
Accessed via Discover or other major multi-source
databases or individual collections/ platforms
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/ejournals
Read online or print / download articles
Browse or search issues
To find articles on specific criteria visit the homepage
of platforms/collections to see advanced search
options (e.g. Discover Advanced Search Options):
An electronic index to journal articles, conference
proceedings and papers, reports, government and
legal publications, patents, books
Contains citations, abstracts and often links to the
full text
Library has many different databases but they all
work with the same concepts
Clear question
Appropriate keywords
Select keywords from question
A databases will retrieve exactly
the words you type
Use ‘operators’ to link keywords together
Synonyms or similar terms
List similar terms or alternative spellings (pediatric OR
paediatric, obese OR overweight )
Construct your search strategy with these points
in mind
Does weight loss and exercise help reduce
high blood pressure?
What are the key concepts?
Now you have your key concepts
what do you do with them to help
answer your question?
To retrieve relevant information you need to be able
to link concepts/keywords together
Databases use Boolean operators to do this
There are three main operators:
(broadens search) OR will show more results
(narrows search) combines concepts
(excludes a concept) use with CAUTION
Truncation – alcoho*
..will show:
alcoholic
alcohol
alcoholism
alcoholics
Proximity Searching
Database dependant
See LibGuides – Guides for boolean help sheet
Phrase searching
Inverted commas around a phrase or term
Heart disease will search for heart, disease, heart
disease
“heart disease” will search for heart disease
Limits
Applying limits will focus your search
Publication date, age, publication types, peerreviewed article, systematic reviews etc
Remember limits are database dependant
Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and
citation database of peer-reviewed literature and
quality web sources
Contains 45.5 million records, 70% with
abstracts
Nearly 19,500 titles from 5,000 publishers
worldwide
70% of content is pulled from international
sources
Includes over 4.6 million conference papers
Phrases need to be in “quotation marks”
Think of alternative terms for your topic –
obese
overweight
obesity
Try proximity operators –useful for some searches
Search terms separately and combine similar terms with
OR
Use AND to combine these ‘groups’ of similar terms
Use limits to reduce the number of results
From the main Library Web pages (http://liv.ac.uk)
and the Electronic Library
From the Library for Online Programmes (left
menu “Quick Search”) or E-Resources page):
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes
Go direct to SCOPUS at
http://ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/login?url=http://www.scopus.com
Used to find one word near to another word in a
sentence or paragraph
There may be different ways to say the same thing
1. “Penicillin allergy”
A phrase search for 1
2. allergy to penicillin
would not find 2
Using proximity operators increases the number of
results
w/2 (within 2 words of each other) w/3 ( 3 words) etc
“penicillin allergy” = 1,767 results
penicillin w/2 allergy = 2,363 results
A reminder of our question
Does weight loss and exercise help reduce
high blood pressure?
“Weight
Loss”
exercise
“high blood
pressure”
1
“weight loss”
This is a phrase so “quotation marks” are needed
2
Los* w/2 weight
Find loss or lose or lost WITHIN 2 words of weight in any
order. The * replaces any letter
3
“weight reduction diet”
Alternative way of saying no 1
4
1 or 2 or 3
Combine 3 searches with OR so ANY of the terms will be
found
5
exercise
6
“high blood pressure”
“phrase”
7
hypertension
Alternative way of saying no 6
8
6 or 7
Combine with OR so EITHER of the terms will be found
9
4 and 5 and 8
Combine with AND. Results will contain any 1 term from
4 AND term 5 AND any 1 term from 8
“weight loss”
Loss w/2
ORweight
Los* w/2 weight
OR
“weight loss” “weight reduction
diet”
“weight reduction
diet”
“high blood
pressure”
OR
hypertension
exercise
“weight loss”
OR
Loss w/2 weight
OR
“weight
reduction diet”
Area within the
overlap contains
one term from
each set of results
MEDLINE is the premier, comprehensive
biomedical database from the US National
Library of Medicine
Updated daily -latest bibliographic citations and
author abstracts
More than 3,900 biomedical journals
Journals from more than 70 countries
Abstracts are included in more than 75% of the
records
Coverage 1948 to present
Medline has a thesaurus – a controlled list of terms
Whatever terms the author has used the indexer will
try and ‘map’ the term to a term on this list
These thesaurus terms are referred to as MeSH terms
or ‘Medical Subject Headings’ or sometimes ‘subject
headings’
If your search terms ‘maps’ to a term in this list it will
appear in your search history with a /
hypertension/
Exploding means including more specific terms
lower down the thesaurus tree
Exploding
Exploding
- includes
all terms
LOWER in
the
thesaurus
tree
If you chose to ‘explode’ your term
will appear in your search history
with an exp e.g.:
exp hypertension/
A reminder of our search terms
From the main Library Web pages (http://liv.ac.uk)
and the Electronic Library
From the Library for Online Programmes, then see
the E-Resources page):
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes
Then save that search!
Use the saved search function
to save time and effort
Create an account by clicking on
the link
(top of page),
fill in your details, save your search
Keep a note of which keywords you’ve used which were most / least useful
Results – click on
to find the article
Reference management packages
Collect, organise & manage references
Articles, books & websites
Software will cite in your chosen format and create
your bibliography
See our Refworks step-by-step guide and further
guides/ video:
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/refworks
Access RefWorks via Library for Online Programmes (right menu or
Refworks help pages):
Off campus use group code - available from the library website
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/refworks
Export references into your Refworks account directly from databases/
collections.
Continue access after leaving Univ of Liverpool
http://www.refworks-cos.com/alumni-program/faqs-user.html
How to use RefWorks on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/user/ProQuestRefWorks
Common problems:
Spalling mistakes
Tyyping errors
Searching with the wrong keywords
Incorrect symbols for Boolean, truncation or wildcard
Searching on the wrong database
Check online help or ask a librarian
Do you have a good article already? Look it up
on the database and see how its indexed. Have
you used these terms? Would it expand / widen
your search?
Is there an author who writes on your topic?
Have you searched to see what else they have
written?
If you have found a good result are there similar
article suggested by the database or the ‘Find it
@ Liverpool’ option?
Medline Life sciences and medical information from
3,900 biomedical journals from 1948
AMED
Allied and Complementary Medicine
physiotherapy, occupational therapy,
rehabilitation – 500 journals from 1995
CINAHL Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied
Plus
Health Literature – nearly 4,500 journals
from 1937
Global
Health
Public health database, information on
international health, non-communicable
diseases, public health nutrition, food
safety & hygiene, 1.2 million
records
from 1973
PsycINFO
Psychology & psychological aspects of
related disciplines in such areas as
medicine, nursing, sociology,
physiology
Scopus
Multi-disciplinary database covering
health and social sciences
Web of
Scientific Medical and technical
Knowledge publications includes references and
‘cited’ function
Medical information needs to be
Accurate - be based on best evidence
Current and Clear
Medical information on the Internet –
Much is of high quality
Much is inaccurate - possibly dangerous
Select your sources carefully! – Internet
Detective
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/
Healthtalkonline http://www.healthtalkonline.org/
or www.youthtalkonline.org
Over 60 topics including - Drugs & Alcohol, HIV, Sexual
Health, Health & Weight
Behind the Headlines
http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsArticles.aspx
Unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories
that make the news
NHS Evidence - wide range of health
information much is freely available
Produced by NICE (National Institute for
Health & Care Excellence)
Fast, easy to use search engine on the site
Refine by – Areas of Interest, Type of
Information, Sources
Accreditation Mark - organisations providing
information for the site meet high quality
standards
Set up in 1995 by medics wanting some
quality control for healthcare websites
Evaluates health websites – accreditation
symbol
Suggestion - two ways to use –
Look for HON code on the website being viewed
Search database of HON accredited sites
8 criteria for evaluating websites
www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html
Providing meaningful health intelligence from
information and data to support decision making
12 public health observatories across the UK
Health profiles for Local Authorities and
Counties
Reports produced by all the PHO’s
eg Older People’s Health and Wellbeing Atlas produced by West
Midlands PHO
Website to find Government services and information
News, information, publications and statistics from
central government departments, agencies and public
bodies
Set up Email alerts / RSS feeds on your area of
interest
Indexes all WHO publications 1948 onwards, articles
from WHO-produced journals, technical documents
1985 to date.
Some full text links
EQUATOR Network
www.equator-network.org/
Resource centre for good reporting of health research
studies
International initiative to enhance reliability & value of
medical research literature by promoting transparent
and accurate reporting of research studies.
Collection of health and social care indicators
Hospital Episode Statistics
Public Health information –statistical, data collections etc
hhttp://www.hscic.gov.uk/hesttp://
http://www.hscic.gov.uk/hes
Hospital episode statistics
Details of all NHS inpatient treatment, outpatient
appointments, A&E attendances in England
Monthly topics of interest focusing on areas of the data
A place to collect, organize, discover and share
everything you like on the web
Share and work in a collaborative way
Link trees
Global Public Health tree – set up by librarian at
British Library
Register and create or just view
http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-f=1_
3622024&N-fa=3070313&N-u=1_
328129&N-p=28586298&N-s=1_3622024
See your Librarian contact details under the
“Contacts” area of the site
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/contacts
Virtual help online
9am-5pm Mon - Fri - live help
Skype/ Skype number
Web form/ email