NRS 414: Care Management Seminar for Baccalaureate Nurses, Spring 2005

Selected Resources

A. C. Buehler Library, Elmhurst College

Your Research Process

1. Identify a topic~ think of different ways to phrase that topic (synonyms, related terms, refining terms).
2. Determine the level of information you need (consumer, professional, both).
3. When you find one or two good articles or books, look at the keywords and terms the authors used, and try those keywords/terms in your searches. Also look at the resources they listed on their "references" page.
4. If any books or articles need to be ordered from other libraries, do that as soon as possible.
5. Evaluate your sources- are they appropriate for your research?

Types of Information- Definitions

Before you begin your research about a topic, it's important to understand that different types of research require different sorts of searches, and you'll need to know what sort of information you're going to need. There are two types of information sources:

• Consumer
• Professional

Consumer Health Information ~ Books, web sites, and other materials such as "magazines and newsletters written for the public or general consumers of health information." (From Magazines for Libraries by Bill Katz and Linda Sternberg Katz. 9th ed. New Providence, New Jersey: R.R. Bowker, 1997. p. 915.)

Examples:   

• PDR Family Guide to Prescription Drugs, Reference R615.1 P111

• Fibromyalgia Network (a periodical)

• Electronic Newspapers ~the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and other newspapers

• WebMD (a website)

Professional Nursing Literature ~ Information written for health care professionals by health care professionals. Some may be "peer-reviewed." Below are some examples of professional nursing literature that we have at the library:

Professional Reference Texts:

• Lippincott's Nursing Drug Guide, Reference R 615 L765nd

• Professional Guide to Diseases, Reference R 616 P964 1998

• Mosby's Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health Dictionary, Reference R 610.3 M894 1998

 

Professional Nursing Journals/Periodicals:

• American Journal of Nursing

• Nurse Researcher

• Journal of Nursing Education

 

Professional Nursing Websites:

• PubMed ~ a free, comphrehensive professional journal database from the National Library of Medicine

• NLM Gateway ~ National Library of Medicine's multiple-datebase search portal. This free website covers searches on PubMed, TOXLINE Special, LOCATORplus, MedlinePlus, ClinicalTrials.gov, DIRLINE, Meeting Abstracts, HSRProj, and OMIM. (note- not all databases are professional-level)

Finding Professional/Scholarly Nursing Literature

Many searches can be performed by using keywords. Here's an example of some effective keywords:

Some searches return too many or too few results. If this happens, you need to refine your search terms:

• Too many results- add more keywords, or make them more specific: i.e. "nursing ethics" to "nursing ethics" + "theory."
• Too few results- broaden your keywords ("grief counseling" to "grief") or use a different term ("holistic therapy" to "alternative health").

2 tricks of the trade:

• if you find an extremely good book/article/website, note the terms that it uses, and try those terms in a new search.
• Look at a book or article's "works cited" page; see what sources the authors used in their research.

Indexing databases (mostly citations, some full text)

CINAHL~ The Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health database provides coverage of the literature related to nursing and allied health. Includes consumer and professional-level information..Some full text (although there is no way to limit your search to full text only in this database).

To access CINAHL or ProQuest Nursing Journals from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and choose ProQuest under "Database Interfaces." You may also need to look at Accessing Library Resources from Off Campus.

Medline~ International index to all areas of medicine.

Full-text databases

ProQuest Nursing Journals~ More than 250 leading full-text journals in nursing and allied health.

To access CINAHL or ProQuest Nursing Journals from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and choose ProQuest under "Database Interfaces." You may also need to look at Accessing Library Resources from Off Campus.

Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition~ Selected full text includes nearly 480 scholarly full text journals, focusing on many medical disciplines.

To access Health Source from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and choose EBSCO under "Database Interfaces." You may also need to look at Accessing Library Resources from Off Campus

PsycINFO ~Coverage includes medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, and other areas. Linked full text is available.

To access PsycINFO from off campus, go to Articles and Databases and choose EBSCO under "Database Interfaces." You will need to enter your Bluenet ID and password when prompted.

1. If you can't find the periodical you need, go to the Alphabetical List of Journals and Magazines Available Online. and enter your journal title to see if we carry it full-text in another database.

2. Search for the periodical title in Illinet Online. Enter the journal name in the search box, such as the American Journal of Nursing.

3. Order the article from another library using our Request a Copy of an Article form. It may take a while to arrive.

Using the Library Catalog (Illinet)

Illinet Online is the library's catalog.One of the quickest ways to search is to browse by subject. Enter a subject term (such as Nursing) in the search box, and in the "Search by" box, choose "Browse subject." You'll get a long alphabetical list of nursing subjects, and you can use the arrow key to toggle back and forth between pages in the list.

If you can't find books writtten specifically about your subject, then try entering in keywords and do an "Any Word Anywhere" search. Use quotation marks to restrict your search to a specific phrase.

2 tricks of the trade:

• If you can't find what you're looking for at our library, click on "Repeat search in All ILCSO Libraries" to see if you can find good titles at other local libraries, which you can then order through Interlibrary Loan.
• If you find books that you need to interlibrary-loan, order them first! They take a while to come in.

• Purdue's OWL (Online Writing Lab) for the APA style

• APA Style Documentation~ from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center.

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, call number R808.06615 P976 2001

The official manual on the APA format. Ask for this item at the reference desk. We also have a limited number of copies for checkout.

Miscellaneous Helpful Websites and Tools

• Interlibrary Loan: ordering items from other Libraries

• Evaluating Websites: Criteria and Tools

• Accessing Library Resources from off-campus

Nursing Associations

• American Nurses Association

• Illinois Nurses Association

• Yahoo! Nursing Website Directory