No.1: Databases and planning a search
Databases
Journal references
- Medline
- Over 13 million citations from more than 4,600 journals on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health. Various files of Medline are available, from Old Medline (1950 - 1965), through to Medline In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations for very recent articles. To find literature from 1948 - 1965 use both Old Medline (using thesaurus and keyword) plus Medline 1950 to present (using thesaurus).
- Embase
- A major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, forensic medicine, and biomedical engineering/instrumentation.
- CINAHL
- Journals, books, and theses related to nursing and allied health, from 1982 to the present.
- PsycINFO
- Professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines, spanning the 19th century to the present. Chapter and book coverage is included.
- Informit
- Australian databases covering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and many other topics. Includes Australian and New Zealand journals not indexed in Medline.
- ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
- Digital library of education-related resources going back to 1966. Some articles from 1993-2004 are available free online.
Evidence-based literature
- MDConsult
- Brings leading medical resources together into one integrated online service to help physicians find answers to pressing clinical questions and make better treatment decisions. It allows clinicians to find answers quickly, keep up with new developments, and educate patients.
- UpToDate
- Specifically designed to answer the clinical questions that arise in daily practice and to do so quickly and easily. The published evidence is summarised and specific recommendations made for patient care.
- BMJ Clinical Evidence
- Accesses the best available evidence on the effects of common clinical interventions. Summarises the current state of knowledge about the prevention and treatment of clinical conditions based on thorough searches and appraisal of the literature; primarily useful for questions on therapy and harm.
- BMJ Best Practice
- Combines the latest research evidence from Clinical Evidence with peer reviewed expert opinion and guidelines. Structured around the patient consultation, it covers diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention.
- The Cochrane Library
- The entire set of Cochrane evidence-based medicine databases, including the Systematic Reviews and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. The best single source of reliable evidence about the effects of health care. See Cochrane Library Fact Sheet for search tips.
- SUMSearch
- Selects the best resources for your question, formats your question for each resource, and makes additional searches based on results.
Drug information
- Micromedex
- Current drug, acute care, and toxicology information.
- MIMS Online
- Australia's most comprehensive and authoritative pharmaceutical database. See theMIMS Online Fact Sheet for search tips.
- Australian Medicines Handbook
- An independent and up-to-date source of drug information for prescribing in Australia. The philosophy of the AMH is to use the best available evidence to support prescribing and dispensing recommendations.
- Therapeutic Guidelines
- The aim of the guidelines is to provide clear, practical, authoritative and succinct therapeutic information for health practitioners, for the management of patients with specific conditions.
- Toxnet
- Databases on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health, and toxic releases.
Standards
- Australian and international standards.
- On-site only, no remote access. Some standards are not immediately available, but may be unlocked; contact the library during business hours.
Planning a search
- State the topic in a sentence or question and identify the main concepts or terms.
- Sample Search Topic:
- Can migraine or cluster headaches be treated effectively with sumatriptan?
- Key concepts:
- 1. Migraine headache
- 2. Cluster headache
- 3. Sumatriptan
- Consider search refinements to limit the retrieval to specific aspects of a topic, such as:
- Human or animal studies
- Male or female subjects
- Age groups, e.g. adolescents, infants
- Time periods
- Languages
- Consider the potential use of the information. A comprehensive search covering several years would be required for grant proposals and research purposes, while a few very precise articles would be more useful for a patient care situation.
- Use the thesaurus (controlled vocabulary) to express main concepts. Use keywords if no appropriate thesaurus term exists.
- Combine the main concepts or search terms using the Boolean Operators - OR, AND. Stating the topic in narrative form not only helps to identify all key terms, but also establishes the relationship of the terms to each other.
The relationship of the key terms in this sample search topic would be expressed as: (Migraine headache or cluster headache) and sumatriptan.
Further help
- See Fact Sheet no.2: Searching and saving in Ovid
- See Fact Sheet no.3: Managing Ovid search results
- Sign up for a free tutorial in the library
- Request a Literature Search
- Contact the library.