This presentation introduces advanced search techniques for health and life sciences resources available through the library website. It covers searching e-books, journals, databases like Scopus and Medline, and reference management software RefWorks. Search strategies discussed include developing focused questions, selecting keywords, using Boolean operators and phrase searching. Tips are provided for constructing effective searches and evaluating search results. Additional online resources suggested include Healthtalkonline, Behind the Headlines and NHS Evidence.

1. Advanced
Search
Techniques
for Health &
Life Sciences

2. This presentation will introduce you to advanced search techniqes for locating evidence-
based scholarly resources for your subject area, including:
 Resources Available via the Library Website
 Finding books and journals- electronic & print
 Searching
 Developing a search strategy
 Searching Scopus
 Searching Medline
 Additional suggested E-Resources:
 RefWorks
 Internet resources for public health
 Using Pearltrees links for Global Public Health
 Support
 Questions

3.  e-books (electronic books) via Discover
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes
Further e-book search options/ individual collections:
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/ebooks
 Search, Browse, Print & download
 Register for a profile within e-book databases/
search platforms such as Discover for...
 Save items to your bookshelf
 Highlight and make notes on the book, see our
guide on using a personal profile in Discover.

4.  Electronic journals or e-journals
 Accessed via Discover or other major multi-source
databases or individual collections/ platforms
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/ejournals
 Read online or print / download articles
 Browse or search issues
 To find articles on specific criteria visit the homepage
of platforms/collections to see advanced search
options (e.g. Discover Advanced Search Options):

5.  An electronic index to journal articles, conference
proceedings and papers, reports, government and
legal publications, patents, books
 Contains citations, abstracts and often links to the
full text
 Library has many different databases but they all
work with the same concepts

6.  Clear question
 Appropriate keywords
 Select keywords from question
 A databases will retrieve exactly
the words you type
 Use „operators‟ to link keywords together
 Synonyms or similar terms
 List similar terms or alternative spellings (pediatric OR
paediatric, obese OR overweight )
 Construct your search strategy with these points
in mind

7. What are the key concepts?
Now you have your key concepts
what do you do with them to help
answer your question?
Does weight loss and exercise help reduce
high blood pressure?

8.  To retrieve relevant information you need to be able
to link concepts/keywords together
 Databases use Boolean operators to do this
 There are three main operators:
(broadens search) OR will show more results
(narrows search) combines concepts
(excludes a concept) use with CAUTION

9.  Truncation – alcoho*
..will show:
 alcoholic
 alcohol
 alcoholism
 alcoholics
 Proximity Searching
 Database dependant
See LibGuides – Guides for boolean help sheet

10.  Phrase searching
 Inverted commas around a phrase or term
 Heart disease will search for heart, disease, heart
disease
 “heart disease” will search for heart disease
 Limits
 Applying limits will focus your search
 Publication date, age, publication types, peer-
reviewed article, systematic reviews etc
Remember limits are database dependant

11.  Scopus is the world‟s largest abstract and
citation database of peer-reviewed literature and
quality web sources
 Contains 45.5 million records, 70% with
abstracts
 Nearly 19,500 titles from 5,000 publishers
worldwide
 70% of content is pulled from international
sources
 Includes over 4.6 million conference papers

12.  Phrases need to be in “quotation marks”
 Think of alternative terms for your topic –
 obese
 overweight
 obesity
 Try proximity operators –useful for some searches
 Search terms separately and combine similar terms with
OR
 Use AND to combine these „groups‟ of similar terms
 Use limits to reduce the number of results

13.  From the main Library Web pages (http://liv.ac.uk)
and the Electronic Library
 From the Library for Online Programmes (left
menu “Quick Search”) or E-Resources page):
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes
 Go direct to SCOPUS at
http://ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/login?url=http://www.scopus.com

14.  Used to find one word near to another word in a
sentence or paragraph
 There may be different ways to say the same thing
1. “Penicillin allergy”
2. allergy to penicillin
 Using proximity operators increases the number of
results
 w/2 (within 2 words of each other) w/3 ( 3 words) etc
“penicillin allergy” = 1,767 results
penicillin w/2 allergy = 2,363 results
A phrase search for 1
would not find 2

15. A reminder of our question
Does weight loss and exercise help reduce
high blood pressure?
“Weight
Loss”
exercise “high blood
pressure”

16. 1 “weight loss” This is a phrase so “quotation marks” are needed
2 Los* w/2 weight
Find loss or lose or lost WITHIN 2 words of weight in any
order. The * replaces any letter
3 “weight reduction diet” Alternative way of saying no 1
4 1 or 2 or 3
Combine 3 searches with OR so ANY of the terms will be
found
5 exercise
6 “high blood pressure” “phrase”
7 hypertension Alternative way of saying no 6
8 6 or 7 Combine with OR so EITHER of the terms will be found
9 4 and 5 and 8
Combine with AND. Results will contain any 1 term from
4 AND term 5 AND any 1 term from 8

17. “weight loss”
Loss w/2 weight
“weight reduction
diet”
“weight loss”
OR
Los* w/2 weight
OR
“weight reduction
diet”

18. exercise
“high blood
pressure”
OR
hypertension
“weight loss”
OR
Loss w/2 weight
OR
“weight
reduction diet”
Area within the
overlap contains
one term from
each set of results

19.  MEDLINE is the premier, comprehensive
biomedical database from the US National
Library of Medicine
 Updated daily -latest bibliographic citations and
author abstracts
 More than 3,900 biomedical journals
 Journals from more than 70 countries
 Abstracts are included in more than 75% of the
records
 Coverage 1948 to present

20.  Medline has a thesaurus – a controlled list of terms
 Whatever terms the author has used the indexer will
try and „map‟ the term to a term on this list
 These thesaurus terms are referred to as MeSH terms
or „Medical Subject Headings‟ or sometimes „subject
headings‟
 If your search terms „maps‟ to a term in this list it will
appear in your search history with a /
hypertension/
 Exploding means including more specific terms
lower down the thesaurus tree

21. If you chose to „explode‟ your term
will appear in your search history
with an exp e.g.:
exp hypertension/
Exploding
Exploding
- includes
all terms
LOWER in
the
thesaurus
tree

22. A reminder of our search terms

23.  From the main Library Web pages (http://liv.ac.uk)
and the Electronic Library
 From the Library for Online Programmes, then see
the E-Resources page):
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes

24.  Then save that search!
 Use the saved search function
to save time and effort
 Create an account by clicking on
the link (top of page),
fill in your details, save your search
 Keep a note of which keywords you‟ve used -
which were most / least useful
 Results – click on to find the article

25.  Reference management packages
 Collect, organise & manage references
 Articles, books & websites
 Software will cite in your chosen format and create
your bibliography
 See our Refworks step-by-step guide and further
guides/ video:
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/refworks

26.  Access RefWorks via Library for Online Programmes (right menu or
Refworks help pages):
 Off campus use group code - available from the library website
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/refworks
 Export references into your Refworks account directly from databases/
collections.
 Continue access after leaving Univ of Liverpool
http://www.refworks-cos.com/alumni-program/faqs-user.html
 How to use RefWorks on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/user/ProQuestRefWorks

27.  Common problems:
 Spalling mistakes
 Tyyping errors
 Searching with the wrong keywords
 Incorrect symbols for Boolean, truncation or wildcard
 Searching on the wrong database
Check online help or ask a librarian

28.  Do you have a good article already? Look it up
on the database and see how its indexed. Have
you used these terms? Would it expand / widen
your search?
 Is there an author who writes on your topic?
Have you searched to see what else they have
written?
 If you have found a good result are there similar
article suggested by the database or the „Find it
@ Liverpool‟ option?

29. Medline Life sciences and medical information from
3,900 biomedical journals from 1948
AMED Allied and Complementary Medicine
physiotherapy, occupational therapy,
rehabilitation – 500 journals from 1995
CINAHL
Plus
Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied
Health Literature – nearly 4,500 journals
from 1937
Global
Health
Public health database, information on
international health, non-communicable
diseases, public health nutrition, food
safety & hygiene, 1.2 million records
from 1973

30. PsycINFO Psychology & psychological aspects of
related disciplines in such areas as
medicine, nursing, sociology,
physiology
Scopus Multi-disciplinary database covering
health and social sciences
Web of
Knowledge
Scientific Medical and technical
publications includes references and
„cited‟ function

31.  Medical information needs to be
 Accurate - be based on best evidence
 Current and Clear
 Medical information on the Internet –
 Much is of high quality
 Much is inaccurate - possibly dangerous
 Select your sources carefully! – Internet
Detective
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/

32.  Healthtalkonline http://www.healthtalkonline.org/
or www.youthtalkonline.org
Over 60 topics including - Drugs & Alcohol, HIV, Sexual
Health, Health & Weight
 Behind the Headlines
http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsArticles.aspx
Unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories
that make the news

33.  NHS Evidence - wide range of health
information much is freely available
 Produced by NICE (National Institute for
Health & Care Excellence)
 Fast, easy to use search engine on the site
 Refine by – Areas of Interest, Type of
Information, Sources
 Accreditation Mark - organisations providing
information for the site meet high quality
standards

34.  Set up in 1995 by medics wanting some
quality control for healthcare websites
 Evaluates health websites – accreditation
symbol
 Suggestion - two ways to use –
 Look for HON code on the website being viewed
 Search database of HON accredited sites
 8 criteria for evaluating websites
www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html

35.  Providing meaningful health intelligence from
information and data to support decision making
 12 public health observatories across the UK
 Health profiles for Local Authorities and
Counties
 Reports produced by all the PHO‟s
 eg Older People’s Health and Wellbeing Atlas produced by West
Midlands PHO

36.  Website to find Government services and information
 News, information, publications and statistics from
central government departments, agencies and public
bodies
 Set up Email alerts / RSS feeds on your area of
interest

37.  Indexes all WHO publications 1948 onwards, articles
from WHO-produced journals, technical documents
1985 to date.
 Some full text links
EQUATOR Network
www.equator-network.org/
 Resource centre for good reporting of health research
studies
 International initiative to enhance reliability & value of
medical research literature by promoting transparent
and accurate reporting of research studies.

38. Hospital Episode Statistics
hhttp://www.hscic.gov.uk/hesttp://
http://www.hscic.gov.uk/hes
 Hospital episode statistics
 Details of all NHS inpatient treatment, outpatient
appointments, A&E attendances in England
 Monthly topics of interest focusing on areas of the data
 Collection of health and social care indicators
 Public Health information –statistical, data collections etc

39.  A place to collect, organize, discover and share
everything you like on the web
 Share and work in a collaborative way
 Link trees
 Global Public Health tree – set up by librarian at
British Library
 Register and create or just view
 http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-f=1_
3622024&N-fa=3070313&N-u=1_
328129&N-p=28586298&N-s=1_3622024

40.  See your Librarian contact details under the
“Contacts” area of the site
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/onlineprogrammes/contacts
 Virtual help online
 9am-5pm Mon - Fri - live help
 Skype/ Skype number
 Web form/ email