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Library Resources for Nursing 370

1. The Research Process-Overview
2. Search Journal Finder
3. Turn your Topic into a Search
4. Search Databases for Articles
5. FAQs

The Research Process-Overview

When you are given a reference to an article and are asked to find and read the article:

1. Search Journal Finder by Journal Title (NOT by topic, by author, or by article title) to find out whether the library subscribes to the journal.
2. If you see the journal title in Journal Finder, click on these symbols to find out if the library subscription includes the year your article was published:
   • means we have some of the journal online
   • means we have some of this journal sitting in the library

When you are given a topic and are asked to find books or articles :

1. Turn your topic into a search.
2. Search the library catalog for books.
3. Go to Nursing Databases to identify articles on your topic.
4. Use Journal Finder to get the full text of articles.

Search Journal Finder:

1. Follow a "Check for full text" link in CINAHL OR open Journal Finder from the library home page
2. Type the name of the journal
3. IF we have a subscription, you will see a computer symbol and a book symbol next to the journal name
4. Hit the computer symbol to go to our online subscription
5. Sometimes we get a journal from several different sources! Look at the beginning and ending dates for our subscriptions (far right column) and choose the one that includes the date in which your article was published
6. Different sources will present the online journal differently. Look for a list of years, volumes, and issues (or a link to archives or past issues) and browse to the year, volume, and issue in which your article was published
7. Once you locate a citation for the article you need, look just above or to the side for PDF or other full text links
8. Different sources will provide different options for emailing articles to you! Look at the top or bottom of the window for print/email commands. If you don't see any, open the PDF or other full text link and look at the top of that window for print/email commands.

Turn a Topic into a Search

• Choose one word (or two if absolutely necessary) for your main ideas.
• Look for synonyms, related ideas, examples, and different spellings for your main ideas.
• Consider truncating. The * symbol in CINAHL can replace all possible endings for a word ( nurs* will search for nurs e , nurs es , nurs ing ).

Example topics:

• Nursing shortage: who, where, when, why?
• Can the use of music decrease the need for post-operative pain medication?

Finding Journal Articles

CINAHL Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health. The first (but not the only) database to use when looking for articles published on nursing topics from 1937 to present.

To access:

• From library home page (http://library.uncg.edu/) > Databases > Nursing
• Off campus users will be asked to log in with Novell user name and password (same as Blackboard and eSpartan)

1. Type a topic such as nursing shortage
2. “Search Options ” can reduce and focus your results:
• Publication year : 2004 - 2009
3. Hit Search button

Way too many results? Try hitting one of the hyperlinks in the sidebar to focus your search even further on a particular topic. Or add another terms to your search to focus results on something of interest to you, for instance: nursing shortage and critical care.

Each citation (list of publication details) or result begins with a hyperlinked article title. Hit the link to see:

• Abstract (paragraph describing the article) – read to decide if you want this article
• Subject links – lead to other articles on this topic. Following these links will remove your Search options/limits!
• Email link (top of page) – IF there’s pdf or html full text attached, this link will email it to you

To set aside articles while you keep searching: hit the Add folder (right side of each result). To view your list of results, hit the Folder symbol (top right of result list).

To see (and re-do) searches, hit the Search History tab (next to Refine Search and Results)

To get the entire article: Look under each citation in the list of results

PDF full text = Online scanned copy version of a printed document; exact duplicate, includes page numbers and data as they appeared in the printed version.

• Hit link to open, read, email, print

HTML full text: Online version of a printed document that in web page form; may not have page numbers, data and tables sometimes do not print out well.

Check for full text = link to Journal Finder

• Hit link to find out if we have the volume, issue, and pages of the journal your article was published in

PubMed (Medline) - Guide to biomedical and health literature 1950s-present. Made freely available online by the National Library of Medicine.

To access: Follow links on the library website (http://library.uncg.edu/) > Databases > Nursing OR type pubmed.gov in the address bar of your web browser.

1. Type your topic: nursing shortage and critical care
2. Limits tab: limit your search to publication dates in the past five years, set language to English

Results:

• Hit hyperlink at the beginning of a result to read the abstract (article summary)
• To see previous searches and run them again, hit the History tab (top)

To get the entire article:

1. Open a new window (File menu > New > Window)
2. Point your web browser to the library home page (http://library.uncg.edu)
3. Open Journal Finder and type the name of the journal. You can try the abbreviation given by PubMed! But if you see a red error message that the title was not found, return to PubMed and mouse over the abbreviated journal title. You should see a pop-up giving the full name of the journal. Return to Journal Finder and type the full name of the journal.

What about finding research articles?

CINAHL has can limit your results to mostly research articles. Follow these steps:

1. Type a topic such as music and postoperative pain
2. Under Search Options, set the following limits to get fewer results
• Publication year : 2004 - 2009
• Research article
3. Hit Search button

Hit the title hyperlink for one of your results to see the abstract (paragraph describing the article) – If the abstract includes phrases such as "The purpose of this study was to..." or "200 patients were surveyed..." then this you can tell that the author actually carried out an experiment or survey on a particular population.

PubMed does not have a research article limit, but it often has abstracts that you can review in order to determine for yourself whether the article is a research report.

FAQs

I only emailed a citation (publication information) to myself. I need the article - what do I do?

Open Journal Finder from the library home page and type the journal name. This will give you the same results as following a “check for full text link” from CINAHL!

Help, I can’t tell if I can get the whole article or not. What do I do?

Contact the Reference Desk: 336-334-5419

http://library.uncg.edu/depts/ref/askalib/ for email, chat, or IM

What if the library does not own the article or book that I need?

Place an InterLibrary Loan Request (articles or books)

 

Lea Leininger
laleinin@uncg.edu
Nursing Librarian