Searching the Literature

Dr. Kasar P.K. Professor PSMNSCB Medical College Jabalpur

Health Action by People

Why search the literature?

• To learn

New facts

New techniques

To avoid mistakes

To present information

How do you proceed?

• Ask your teacher

Undergraduate textbooks

• Read your textbook

Postgraduate books

• Go to pertinent references

Reference works

• Review articles

• Monographs

• Thesis (published, unpublished)

• Journals - Review journals

Journals with original articles

Bibliographic References

What has been published, where and when?

What in a nutshell is the work?

Refer Index journals and publications

Cumulative index medicus

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHIC SERVICES

• Medline

•Embase

•AIDSLINE

•Clinpsych

•Healthstar

•Toxline

•Biosys

Review journals- ( examples)

Clinics of North America series

Year Book series

Annual Review series

Progress in … series

Recent progress series

Recent awareness series

Original articles

Lancet

British Medical Journal

New England Journal of Medicine

American Journal of Medicine

National Medical Journal’ Journal of Association of Physicians India

Indian Journal of Community Medicine

Over 4000 journals are peer review and indexed. Many journals are

now available both in print and electronic editions

The index journal provides information on

• The title of the article• The authors• Journal• Year of Publication• Abstracts(almost always)

You can search by Key word,year, subject, author etc.

Index journals are available both in print version and

Electronic Edition

CD ROM versions, Online versions

Online information retrieval

• The internet and the World Wide Web ( www)• What is available in the net?• The world wide web is a source of information on everything under the sun.

Over 100 million computers are connected electrically• Information is located in many computers (host server) on any topic.• It can be accessed at will

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The World Wide Web

• Over 100 million computers networked

• Host servers act as repositories

• Any time access of information

• Information on any topic

• Quality of information varies

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Search Engines

• Pub-Med Medline

• Medweb

• Altavista

• Webcrawler

• CDC

• MedExplorer

• Indian Medlars

• Infoseek• yahoo• hotbot• netscape• exite • google

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MEDLINE

• The most popular medical index

• Electronic adaptation of Index- Medicus

• Published by NLM, Bethesda

• Available in CD-ROM and internet

• Updated every month

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Quick Search

When using Quick-Searching feature a simple search is done by word, parts of words. When searching for words, the Quick-Searching feature will match whole words or parts of words

• For example: Bibliograph Would match

Bibliographies, Bibliography, Bibliographical, or anything else containing 'Bibliograph'.

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BiographyDoes Not Match

Biographies, Biographical, or any similar variation that does not

contain the whole word as typed in the search.

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Advanced Search

• Multiple word searches

• Entire phrases searches

• Boolean searches

• Other searches

can be done from Advanced Search.

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Boolean Searches

Available Keywords and

Example: Pulmonary and TuberculosisDescription: All search results will contain both terms " Pulmonary”

and “Tuberculosis" or

Example: Renal or Kidney

Description: Results will contain either the term "renal" or the term

"kidney".

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Boolean Searches

Available Keywords • not

Example: Tuberculosis not potts Description: Results will contain the term "tuberculosis" but not the term "potts".

• near

Example: Pulmonary near TuberculosisDescription: All search results will contain terms " Pulmonary tuberculosis”

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Literature Search Request

• Indian Medlars http://indmed.nic.in/

Provide requested literature after search on payment

• HAP India http://www.hapindia.org/

Provide requested literature after search free

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Web Address

• Indian Medlars http://indmed.nic.in/

• PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• http://www.cdc.gov/

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Web Address

• Webcrawler http://www.webcrawler.com/

• Medexplorer http://www.medexplorer.com

• Altavista http://www.altavista.com/

• Hotbot http://www.hotbot.com/

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Link to Web Address

Link to different Search Engines, Journals, Institutions,Organizations etc available on

http://kasarpk.tripod.com

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Thank You

Good luck for nice Search