The UNB Libraries' Guide to Research in Nursing has just been updated. It suggests library and other resources, in print and online, specifically for Nursing students. Find it under E-Rresources>>Subject Guides and Tutorials at the UNB Libraries website (http://www.lib.unb.ca) or go directly to http://www.lib.unb.ca/subject_guides/Nursing.html.
ETHX on the Web is a bibliographic database prepared by the Library and Information Services group of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. It is freely available from the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) website at http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/databases/index.htm.
The database provides information about over 200,000 "journal articles, book chapters, bills, laws, court decisions, reports, books, audio-visuals, and news articles relating to bioethics and professional ethics", most of which date from 1988 to the present. An FAQ list about the database can be found at http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/databases/dbfaqs.htm.
ETHX on the Web has Basic, Advanced, and Boolean search modes. The Advanced mode lets you search by Keyword (or even better, choose terms from the Subject List), combine terms, and limit by date, publication type and so on. An unusual and interesting limit is General Approach, ie Empirical, Legal, Philosophical, Religious, etc. The database, which is updated monthly, has over 3000 items classified under the Subject term "Nursing Ethics".
Branching Out is a new 12-minute video, available online at the NLM's Distance Education Resources site: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/video/. It introduces viewers to the development, structure and use of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) which are used to index journal articles in Medline. The video provides a quick and easy means of learning something about topics including the MeSH tree structure, suheadings, specificity, and so on. CINAHL's subject heading structure closely parallels the MeSH, so these concepts are very applicable to CINAHL searching as well.
The UNB Nursing LiBlog is a blog maintained by Frances Giberson, the liaison librarian for the University of New Brunswick's Faculty of Nursing in Fredericton. It is a webpage where I will be posting messages about library resources and information sources beyond the library.
Why a blog?
I've been circulating a newsletter to UNBF students and faculty for about a year now, and will continue to do so, but there are things a blog can do that a newsletter can't. Because it's a webpage, postings can be archived, and organized into categories. So if you want to refer to an item about Scopus, for example, you can click on the Indexes and Abstracts category, or just enter the word in the Search box. To take advantage of this capability, I've started transferring some items from past newsletters to the blog.
Blogs are great for linking directly to other sites and stories on the web, including other interesting blogs, so I'll be able to direct you to more Internet resources this way.
How can I get access to the UNB Nursing Liblog?
The blog's url is http://www.unb.ca/libraries/resources/nursing/. It will also be available as a link from the UNBF Nursing web site at http://www.unbf.ca/nursing/. I suggest that you bookmark the site so you can find it easily.
If you use a web feed (RSS or Atom) reader, you can subscribe to the blog's feed. That way you can have the latest updates delivered to you, without your having to go to the blog's site. You can find more information about this at http://www.sixapart.com/about/feeds. UNB Libraries also provides a page of information and more links at http://www.lib.unb.ca/help/RSS.php.
The US National Library of Medicine offers free access to a program called DocMorph, which converts files from any of 50 different formats into PDF format. Formats include MS Word, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, JPEG, TIFF and many more. The software lets you combine up to 10 separate documents into one PDF file. Find out more and use the software at http://docmorph.nlm.nih.gov/docmorph/. DocMorph also enables you to convert your files into synthesized speech. The NLM developed this software to "make the exchange and use of biomedical library electronic information easier for librarians, library users, and the general public". You have to register (free) to use it.
There are at least two reasons you might want to find dissertations: 1) to find out whether the research project you have chosen for your graduate work has already been done, and 2) to look up a dissertation to which you have found a reference. You will often find dissertation citations when you are searching CINAHL.
UNB Libraries provides access to the full text of all the PhD dissertations and Master's theses granted by over 1000 universities, mostly in North America, since 1997. This includes over 7300 in Nursing alone. The same "Digital Dissertations" database also provides indexing and abstracting, but not fulltext, for dissertations and theses from 1996 back to 1861. To access the database, go to the UNB Libraries homepage at http://www.lib.unb.ca, go to Indexes and Abstracts from the e-Resources menu at the top of the page, and choose the title "Digital Dissertations (with some fulltext)".
As well as the familiar Keyword, Author, and Title, this database lets you search for dissertations by School, Adviser and Degree. You can combine two or more fields in on search. There is also a searchable Subject field, which classifies theses by academic area. You can use the Browse function to restrict your search to a particular Subject if you wish, or use the Subject Tree to search within several subjects at once. You can also limit your search by date range, consult the School Index, and combine earlier searches using the Search History screen.
Recently, a number of dissertations, but not Master's theses, have been added to the ProQuest Nursing journal collection. For subject searching, Digital Dissertations is better because it is more comprehensive. On the other hand, there is full text available back to 1990, so if you have a citation to a Nursing dissertation between 1990 and 1997, it is worth checking there for it. To get to the ProQuest journal collection, go to the UNB Libraries home page, click on e-Journals in the e-Resources menu, and choose ProQuest Nursing from the "Browse e-Journal Collections" list. Then choose "ProQuest Nursing Search" at the next page. You can then search by keyword, author, title etc. Dissertation results will appear under a separate Dissertations tab. If full text is available, it can be downloaded immediately from the site.
Another place to look for full-text theses is Library and Archives Canada's Theses Canada Portal, which allows you to "access and search for free the full text electronic versions of Canadian theses and dissertations that were published from the beginning of 1998 to August 31, 2002". The portal is free on the Internet at http://www.collectionscanada.ca/thesescanada/index-e.html.
The Merriam-Webster Medical Desk Dictionary is now accessible within the Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition database. The new dictionary has more than 59,000 entries and, according to the publisher, it is "designed for allied health students, medical professionals, as well as anyone looking for an easy-to-use guide to today's medical terminology". To use this dictionary, go to Health Source: Nursing/Academic (in the Indexes and Abstracts list, accessed from the e-Resources Menu at the UNB Libraries home page: http://www.lib.unb.ca). Choose "Medical Dictionary" from the green menu bar at the top of the screen, and browse for your word.
UNB Libraries also provides access to an online Dictionary of Nursing, from Oxford Reference Online. It has 10,000 entries, and aims to provide "comprehensive and authoritative coverage of the ever-expanding vocabulary of the nursing professions". To access it, choose Reference Materials from the e-Resources menu, and enter "dictionary of nursing" (without the quotation marks) in the search box. You will retrieve several titles, including the Dictionary of Nursing.
e-CPS is the electronic version of the Canadian Pharmaceutical Association's annual "Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties". It contains close to 3000 current product monographs including 100 drug or drug class monographs prepared by CPhA, quick reference drug information and clinical tools, directories of sources of drug and health care information, a list of discontinued products and a comprehensive crossed reference index of generic and brand names.
You will find e-CPS under Reference Materials in the e-Resources menu. It is classified as a Handbook, so you can use the Category list to find it. Or, just enter e-cps in the "Find a Title" search box.
UNB's license allows up to 5 people to have access to e-CPS at one time. If you are denied access, try again a few minutes later.
UNB Libraries has added a new database called Scopus, which you can use to find articles in peer reviewed scientific, medical and technical journals. There is some coverage in the social sciences also. Scopus is quite easy to use, and you may find it a useful supplement to specialized databases such as CINAHL, PSYCInfo, Medline etc.,
particularly if you are looking for information on a topic that crosses disciplinary lines. As in our other databases, the LinkSource link resolver has been enabled, so you should be able to link directly to articles in e-journals to which UNB subscribes. To use Scopus, go to the UNB Libraries website at http://www.lib.unb.ca and choose Scopus from the Indexes and Abstracts list under the e-Resources dropdown menu at the top of the page.
When searching Scopus, you should keep in mind that it has certain limitations:
• Unlike CINAHL and most of our other specialized databases, coverage only goes back to the mid-90s.
• Scopus does not claim to cover any field of study in a comprehensive way. It is essentially a way of getting access to information about articles published in a number of large electronic journal collections.
• Scopus does not use any standardized search terms. Therefore you must use keyword searching, and try to think of all the possible synonyms to the terms you are searching. For example, if you were looking for articles about Pet Therapy and you entered “pet therapy” in the search box you would retrieve 84 items. A search using the synonym “animal assisted therapy” yields 85. Combining the two terms using “or” retrieves a total of 162 items, which indicates that most writers use one term or the other but not both. In CINAHL, on the other hand, either term entered into the search box would automatically map to the preferred term Pet Therapy, and you could retrieve all the references on that subject with one search.
A valuable additional component of Scopus is Scirus, an award-winning Web search engine that provides a single point of access to the scientific Web -- over 160 million pages and documents from websites relevant to research and education, including university sites, author homepages, digital libraries and archives, institutional repositories, preprint servers, and patents.
Write N Cite has now been installed on all the workstations in the SIL. Write N Cite is a plugin that allows MS Word to interact with RefWorks. When you open a Word document at an SIL computer, you will see a small red Write N Cite toolbar at the top of your screen on the right. If you click on the toolbar, the RefWorks login screen will appear. If you have a RefWorks account, you can log in, and then insert citations from your database into your document. Then you can use the Bibliography function in Write N Cite to format your in-text citations and reference list in APA format, or one of many other citation styles.
RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic database manager, accessible through the UNB Libraries web site, which allows you to create a database of references that can be organized, searched, and used to automatically construct bibliographies. To find out more about RefWorks, and to get your own account, go to http://www.lib.unb.ca/instruction/RefWorks/. You can get to this page via the UNB Libraries home page (http://www.lib.unb.ca). Choose RefWorks from the e-Resources menu at the top of the page.
The HealthStar database has been added to the list of Indexes and Abstracts available under the e-Resources menu at the UNB Libraries website (http://www.lib.unb.ca). HealthStar is a subset of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Medline database. It contains citations to the published literature on health services, technology, administration, and research. HealthStar focuses on both the clinical and non-clinical aspects of health care delivery. The following topics are included: evaluation of patient outcomes; effectiveness of procedures, programs, products, services and processes; administration and planning of health facilities, services and manpower; health insurance; health policy; health services research; health economics and financial management; laws and regulation; personnel administration; quality assurance; licensure; and accreditation.
HealthStar is provided by Ovid, the same source from which we access CINAHL, Medline, EBM Reviews, and Health and Psychosocial Instruments. Because HealthStar citations are derived from Medline, it uses MeSH, or Medical Subject Headings. Subject mapping, which is on by default, tries to map your search terms to an appropriate MeSH term. For example, the term "emergency departments" entered in the search box brings up a list of suggested terms, which include "Emergency Service, Hospital", "Emergency Nursing" and "Triage". It is also possible to search by keyword if none of the suggested terms seems suitable.
UNB Libraries has acquired 93 e-books specifically for Nursing, from NetLibrary. They include recent titles from publishers such as F.A. Davis, Jones & Bartlett, and Elsevier Health Sciences, as well as many university press books. To access the collection, go to the UNB Libraries home page at http://www.lib.unb.ca and choose e-Books from the e-Resources menu at the top of the page; then click NetLibrary. At the NetLibrary search screen, click the "What's Available" tab at the top of the page to view all the books in the Nursing collection.
You can view and print from NetLibrary books and you can also "check out" the books in this collection. This gives you exclusive access to the title you have checked out for 24 hours. You might want to do this because only one person can view a particular NetLibrary book at one time. To check books out you must create an account for yourself, by clicking on "Create a Free Account" at the top right corner of the search screen, and following the instructions that appear.
The NetLibrary books are all listed in Quest, so you will find them, along with print books and e-books from other sources (including the Books@Ovid Nursing Reference texts) when you search the library catalogue.
The next introductory RefWorks Tutorial will be held on Wednesday, January 18th, from 2:30 to 4:00 pm in the Harriet Irving Library's ITLC. Susan Gants of UNB's RefWorks team will be the instructor. This hands-on session covers creating an account, navigating RefWorks, organizing and managing your references, getting references into RefWorks, creating a bibliography, and using Write N Cite. The tutorial is free for UNB and STU students, faculty and staff, but registration is required. Register at the UNB Training site: http://training.unb.ca.
The 206 journals in PubMed Central are now accessible through UNB Libraries. PubMed Central (PMC) is the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archives of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Participating journals, including such important titles as BMJ (British Medical Journal), CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and Medical History, make some or all of their content available on the PubMed Central website. The amount of a journal's content that is available immediately varies, however. Some journals, such as BMJ, make all research articles available immediately, but do not provide access to other types of articles until one year after their publication. Others, such as Nutrition Journal, have an "open access" publishing model and all of their content is published free online.
Some of these current journals were already available at UNB from other sources, but perhaps the most remarkable aspect of PubMed is its archival project. PubMed is digitizing the back issues of many journals and making them available free online. For example, Medical History is available electronically from 1957 to the present, while CMAJ's issues from 1914 to 1940 have been digitized so far. For more information about PubMed Central, go to http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/intro.html. To explore the list of PubMed Central journals, go to the UNB Libraries website at http://www.lib.unb.ca, choose e-Journals from the e-Resources menu, and pick PubMed Central from the "Browse e-Journal Collections" box.
Cochrane Systematic Reviews of the effects of health care interventions are considered the gold standard in evidence-based health care worldwide. The reviews are accessible through UNB Libraries as part of the EBM Reviews database. Attendees will learn how Cochrane Reviews are prepared and how they are used to guide practice. They will have hands-on practice in using the EBM Reviews database to find reviews, and practice reading the Cochrane review. This one and a half hour session will be held on Wednesday February 8th, from 2:30 to 4:00 pm in the Harriet Irving Library's ITLC teaching lab. For more information, and to register, go to the UNB Training Site at http://training.unb.ca.