Searching EMBASE and CINAHL for health librarians

LIBR534 – Health information sources & services
Searching Embase & CINAHL
January 21 st 2010 [updated Jan 22]
Greg Rowell & Dean Giustini, SLAIS Adjunct faculty
Bowl of Hygeia – Pharmacy Florence Nightingale - Nursing

Agenda
Module I, Class II
Searching Embase & Cinahl
Medline & Embase
Cinahl for nursing & allied health
~ Break 7:15pm~
Discuss ‘mapping’ article by Shams
Answer questions on your own
Find a partner
Discuss in larger group (Think-pair-share)
Search assignment
Discussion
Rowell-Giustini – LIBR534

Rowell-Giustini – LIBR534 Medline – MeSH tree structures
Each of the 16 trees is assigned a letter as an identifier
Anatomy
Organisms
Diseases
Chemical and Drugs
Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment
Psychiatry and Psychology
Phenomena and Processes
Disciplines and Occupations
Anthropology, Education, Sociology and Social Phenomena
Technology, Industry, Agriculture
Humanities
Information Science
Named Groups
Health Care
Publication Characteristics
Geographic Locations

EMTREE headings – 15 branches or ‘facets’
History of Embase structure [link] … Preferred terms are organized into a hierarchical structure with 15 branches which are called facets : A Anatomical concepts B Organism names C Physical diseases, disorders and abnormalities D Chemicals and drugs E Analytical, diagnostic and therapeutic techniques, equipment and parameters F Psychological and psychiatric phenomena G Biological phenomena and functions H Chemical, physical and mathematical phenomena I Society and environment J Types of article or study K Geographic names L Groups by age and sex M Named groups of persons N Health care concepts Q Biomedical disciplines, science and art

What do MeSH and EMTREE have in common?
Both are comprehensive biomedical / life science vocabularies
Similar faceted structure (Emtree modeled on MeSH in 1988)
Both thesauri have broader/narrower terms & use explode/focus
Both have unique elements, levels of detail and subject focus
Rowell-Giustini – LIBR534 In the NLM Classification books on ‘pre-clinical’ topics are filed in…..

Embase synopsis in one (1) minute…
Rowell-Giustini – LIBR534 Think – Pair – Share Start by saying:
Embase is an important pharmaceutical database created by the European publisher Elsevier
It provide detailed indexing of pharmacy-related content with coverage of more than 5,000 journals from 70 countries
“I get by with a little help from my friends…[link]”

Medline & Embase – Key facts
Embase
Biomedical database produced by Elsevier
Comprehensive coverage of biomedicine, drugs & pharmacology
Indexed with 56,000 terms, 27,000 drug & chemical names
~12 million records from 1980 - present; indexes 5,000 journals
Overlap with Medline ca. 60% (at journal level)
Unique records especially drug titles + European literature
Medline
Biomedical database produced by NLM (U.S. National Library of Medicine)
Focus on biomedicine incl. nursing, dentistry and veterinary science
Indexed with MeSH with over 25,000 total terms
17 million records from 1966-present (excl. Old Medline)
5,500 journals; overlap with Embase ca. 60% (at journal level)
Unique records especially in US titles + nursing literature etc.

In searching – why choose Embase?
Emtree drug terminology is:
More extensive with extensive synonyms (including trade names)
865 preferred terms added in 2009
Organized in detailed tree structures in polyhierarchy of drug terms
Structured from multiple points of view and use
Best for identifying and searching for new drugs
Emtree includes all MeSH which are linked to EMTREE headings
Usually Embase is used in conjunction with other databases

CINAHL reflects nursing & allied health literature
CINAHL = Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health lit
Indexes ~1200 English language journals, 1981 to present
Updated every 2nd month
~70% of CINAHL headings adopted from MeSH
About 55% unique content specifically for nursing/ allied health
Note in a record how different limits are in CINAHL

Medline, Embase & Cinahl
Three way comparison ( see handout )
How do health librarians recommend one over another?
Context is important – what is the clinical question?
Who is asking?
Health librarians need to know coverage fully
Strengths, weaknesses of each database
Nothing wrong with checking all three places
Both Medline & Embase citations are searchable on the web
A lot of Cinahl’s content not searchable on the web

http://blogs.ubc.ca	113
http://databases-portal.mihanblog.com	64
http://ubumedischteam.wordpress.com	27
http://www.databases-portal.mihanblog.com	14
http://ubugeneeskunde.wordpress.com	12
http://caresciencelibs.blogspot.com	8
http://www.slideshare.net	7
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	2

Searching EMBASE and CINAHL for health librarians

by Dean Giustini

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