Library databases for Nursing | Search Techniques | Accessing & Obtaining Sources | Using InterLibrary Loan for Articles Not Owned by NMSU Library | Evaluating Potential Sources | Getting Additional Help
For most Nursing classes, you will be required to find articles on given topics. To help you complete your assignments, the Library staff have put together this web page showing you how to navigate through the NMSU Library's resources to locate and obtain articles.
The articles you need may be available in paper, electronically, or both. To find articles, you will need to start in an index or database that has citations, abstracts, or full-text. The table gives some suggestions on good indexes or databases to use with Nursing Topics.
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Database Name: |
Database Description: |
| Nursing & Medical Databases |
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| CINAHL | This index to the nursing literature includes allied health, biomedical and consumer health journals, publications of the American Nursing Association, and the National League for Nursing. Coverage: 1982-present. |
| Medline | From the U.S. National Library of Medicine, this database provides access to 3,900 journals in all areas of medicine, including clinical medicine, experimental medicine, dentistry, nursing, health services administration, nutrition, and much more. Coverage: 1965-present. Available via FirstSearch. |
| Related Databases |
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| Child Abuse & Neglect | Abstracts of child abuse information from journals and reports. Coverage: 1967-present. Available via NISC Biblioline. |
| Emerald Fulltext Library | Emerald provides full text access to over 100 journals in the fields of Business, Marketing, Education, Engineering, Management, Food and Nutrition Science, Healthcare Management and Library Science. Coverage years vary by title but most titles are available full text from the mid 1990s to the present. |
| General Science Abstracts | Journals and magazines from the U.S. and Great Britain, covering such subjects as anthropology, astronomy, biology, computers, earth sciences, medicine and health, and much more. Includes articles, reviews, biographical sketches, and letters to the editor. Coverage: 1984-present. Available via FirstSearch. |
| ILI Standards Infobase | Contains descriptions to over 450,000 standards from 100+ issuing agencies. Subject fields include engineering, chemistry, heath sciences, physics, computer and information science. The database is searchable on multiple fields: Standard Number, Title, Keyword, and Publisher and Date. |
| PsycFIRST |
Contains citations and summaries of journal articles, chapters, books, technical reports, and dissertations in psychology and related disciplines. Coverage: current three years only. Available via FirstSearch. |
| PsycINFO | Produced by the American Psychological Association, PsycINFO contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, technical reports and dissertations in psychology, as well as the psychological aspects of related disciplines. Includes international material from 1,300 periodicals. Coverage: 1887-present. |
| General Full-text Databases |
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| Expanded Academic ASAP | Full-text articles, abstracts and citations from several thousand academic journals, general periodicals, magazines and newspapers. |
| WilsonSelect Plus | Full text journal database with over 800 high-quality periodicals. Comprised of records from Readers' Guide Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, General Science Abstracts, and Wilson Business Abstracts. 1994 - present; available via FirstSearch. |
When searching CINAHL or Medline, do NOT select the option to limit your search to full text. These databases themselves contain very few full-text articles, but they will link you to full-text articles in other databases provided that you do not have the "full-text" limit on.
A keyword search for "medication errors" in CINAHL, for example, finds only 105 articles when the full-text limit is on. The same search finds 2,286 articles when not limited to full-text. Many of these 2,286 articles are available full-text in some other database, just not in CINAHL.
CINAHL will point you to full-text in other databases by having the notation "Linked Full Text" under a citation.
Medline will point you to full-text in other databases with the notation "See more details for locating this item."
You should pretty easily be able to check full-text availability in other databases and electronic journals by following the links given from your database, but if you need more introduction to doing this, see Finding Articles Full-text.
To find the types of resources that will be helpful in Nursing research, you will need to perform more sophisticated searches than keyword anywhere. You will need to use a wider range of Search Techniques, such as those described on this linked Web page.
Not all articles are available full-text online! In fact, many scholarly scientific articles (such as are used in Nursing) are only available in print.
If the article you want is not available full-text in the database you are using and you cannot find it full-text in another database, write down the title, author, volume, issue and date of the article (that is, the article's citation information). The article might be available in print in the Library's collection, and copies of print articles will be made and provided to distance education students.
The online catalog lists materials that the library has purchased or subscribed to - including print journals. The catalog does not index articles; it will only show if the library has a subscription to the given journal. Not all articles are available electronically, so you may need to visit these instructions about Finding Articles through the Online Catalog.
If the library does not have the journal that you need, you can request a copy of the article through Interlibrary Loan. Because it may take some time to get a copy of the article from another library, plan to submit your request with plenty of time to spare (2-3 weeks). For more information on Interlibrary Loan, including registering for this free service, please visit http://lib.nmsu.edu/depts/illdds/faq.html.
Be very careful of the sources you use, especially those you find through general full-text databases such as InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP and WilsonSelect Plus. Theses databases include many popular resources that are not appropriate for college-level Nursing research.
In fact, if you are searching in one of these general databases, you should also select the option to limit your search to refereed publications (in InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP) or peer reviewed publications (in WilsonSelect). Both of these limits will restrict your results to articles from scholarly journals.
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Library staff are here to help you throughout your research project.
Page created by Kate Manuel
Page last updated by Cindy Watkins Tuesday, June 26, 2006