HSCI 345: Texts, two-fours, and tattoos . . and other health issues of the tweens to twenties

If you need help, please contact Hazel Plante, Liaison Librarian at 778.782.4173 or hazel_plante@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

1) The Library Website/Canvas tutorial

Key Points

SFU Library's self-directed Research Skills Tutorial 

Other Library Research Tutorials

Library Catalogue - Remember these steps three easy steps 1) Search by Keyword 2) Select a book from the list that appears to meet your needs 3) Use the subject headings for that book to find similar materials.
Article Indexes and Databases for Health Sciences - These allow you to find journal articles on a topic.
SFU Library Style guides - This page is very helpful and contains our new and improved style guides as well as pointers on citing and writing.
SFU Library's self-directed Plagiarism Tutorial- This tutorial begins with a self-test and is helpful for clarifying some of the key points.

Keep Track of Every Item You Consult

See the Citation Software section below for more details on building bibliographies. You can also consult the APA guide on the Library homepage for assistance using APA style.

2) Using the Library Catalogue and General Search Tips

Use the Library Catalogue to find books on your topic.

Before searching the Library catalogue or databases, think about your topic. Break down your topic into concepts or keywords. Think of synonyms for each keyword or concept.  Keep your mind open to new or alternative words that describe your topic.

Identifying search terms

To identify which terms you should use to search for books and articles, write down the proposed title of your project (or an imaginary title of an ideal article) and underline the important/meaningful words, e.g.:

  • Prevention and control of lung cancer
  • Use the underlined words and think of any variations, synonyms or related terms. (i.e. control = treatment or therapy)

Combining terms

The simple terms and and or allow you to combine terms to broaden or narrow your searches.

Narrow: combining with and requires ALL terms to be found in each search result (use this for finding two or more concepts in the same source). You may wan to consider building your search one term at a time to see how your results get narrower (or fewer). Here is an example of keywords linked together. Remember each time you add a term with "and" you will get fewer results.

  • "cancer and canada and prevalence" (narrow)
  • "cancer and canada and prevalence and women" (more narrow and fewer results)

Broaden: combining with or requires ANY term to be found in each search result (use this for finding synonyms), e.g.

  • "cancer and canada and prevalence (women or female*)"

    * The asterisk - the asterisk is used for a word that may have several endings (i.e. female* will find females )

Here are some additional sample keyword searches:

  • "lung cancer" and alberta
  • cancer and women and pregnancy

Remember your three steps: 1) Do a keyword search 2) Select a book from the list that appears to meet your needs 3) Use the subject headings for that books to find similar materials. Subject headings are terms that have been assigned to each book. They are extremely useful for locating books on the same subject regardless of the terminology used by the author. Using subject headings in your search can lead to more accurate results but it's almost always easier to start with keyword searching first. For example:.

  • Cancer Lungs
  • Cancer Lungs - Treatment
  • Cancer Treatment
  • Lungs - Cancer - Treatment

If you click on the subject headings you will find other books that have critical information on your topic.

3) Using the MEDLINE and Web of Science Databases

There a number of journal article and citation databases specific to Health Sciences research available to you.
Before you start, note that not all databases are created equal. Some databases will provide you with full text articles or only citations or both. If the full text of the article is not available, however, most of the databases at SFU will give you the option to find the article either in print in the Library or in another electronic database. Click on "Where Can I Get This?"

First, A few things to remember:

  • Remember to use your keywords and the "and" and "or" commands. They are very useful for the databases as well.
  • MEDLINE is the premiere database for doing research on medical topics. There are different options available to search MEDLINE: Ovid, which offers some powerful advanced search techniques; EBSCO, which is a similar interface to that of CINAHL (see below), and PubMed, from the National Library of Medicine.

  • CINAHL also has extensive material for health sciences research. Its focus is Nursing and Allied Health literature. Journals and articles located here are often less clinical in nature than those found in MEDLINE.
  • Try other databases such as Web of Science or Biomedical Reference Collection: Comprehensive Edition. Click here to get a full list of databases in Health Sciences.
  • Check for account options in each database so you can save your searches.

1) MEDLINE

To access MEDLINE, first navigate to Journal articles and databases from the library home page. From here you can either click on the M in the alphabetical listings, or select "Health Sciences" from the subject drop-down list.

You will see four access options for MEDLINE: Medline [EBSCO] (1945-), Medline [OVID], and PubMed (one for current students and one for alumni). EBSCO Medline will likely be the best search options for this class, although you may want to familiarize yourself with Ovid later.

PubMed is available free to anyone online. When accessing PubMed from off-campus, be sure to connect to it through the SFU Library's website. This will ensure you see the "Where Do I Get This?" links that will take you to SFU full text, or will tell you whether the journal is available in the Library.

An excellent tutorial for searching PubMed can be found here.

2) Web of Science

To access Web of Science, first navigate to Journal articles and databases from the library home page. From here you can either click on the W in the alphabetical listings, or select "Health Sciences" from the subject drop-down list.

Web of Science tips and tricks:

  1. Refine your searches -- document type is especially useful to select Review Articles
  2. When selecting articles, don't forget to "Add to Marked List" BEFORE going to the next page of results.
  3. When emailing your citations, don't forget to choose the fields you want included.

4) Citation Management Tools

Citation or reference management tools collect your journal article, book, or other document citations together in one place, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies in almost any style — in seconds.  Citation management tools help you keep track of your sources while you work and store your references for future use and reuse.