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Library Orientation for Direct Entry Nursing Students

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Plan Your Search

Database Vocabularies

Many library databases will assign a specific list of terms—CINAHL "Subject Headings," PubMed and MEDLINE "MeSH" (Medical Subject Headings), the PsycInfo "Thesaurus"—to represent an idea, instead of relying solely on the keywords or phrases different authors use in their articles. Examine these to find the best terms, and consider your topic from multiple viewpoints:

Subject headings are updated annually, but the updates may lag real-world developments. mRNA Vaccines was added to MeSH in 2022 and CINAHL does not yet offer a subject heading specifically for this concept.

When you find references to relevant articles, examine their subject indexing in a detailed view

  • CINAHL: both Major Subjects and Minor Subjects
  • PubMed: MeSH terms
  • PsycInfo: Subject and perhaps Classification

to find additional subject terms for your search.

If the database record for the item was added recently, it may lack subject headings, but they will be added at a later date.

Always Search with "Explode"

"Explode" in health sciences databases retrieves references containing

(selected subject term) OR (all the more specific subject headings in its "tree" hierarchy or hierarchies)

If you explode the subject heading Face, you will also retrieve articles specifically about Nose, Eyelashes, etc.

PubMed automatically explodes MeSH terms, but you must specify explodes in all most other databases.

Save the "Major" Option for Later

Health sciences database indexing usually identifies which subject headings describe the primary topic of an article. Use this feature to reduce an overwhelming number of results that persist after applying all other search terms, limits, and filters.

Use Subheadings Carefully

Use subheadings to create more precise searches if applying all other search terms, limits, and filters returns overly broad results. Select all appropriate subheadings, using the MeSH Qualifiers List and scope notes for guidance.

Aspirin/administration and dosage
Aspirin/therapeutic use

While you can apply subheadings to exploded subject headings, usually they cannot be exploded themselves.

Tips:

  • Use multiple related subheadings. See the MeSH Qualifiers List for logical groupings, which generally apply to CINAHL subheadings as well
  • Consider applying subheadings to multiple subject headings:
    Aspirin/therapeutic use
    Headache/drug therapy

Searching Keywords

Use keywords as well as subject headings to comprehensively search a topic.

  • Include acronyms and abbreviations
  • Unless you are required to focus on American research, consider adding British keywords to your search strategy:
  • estrogen* OR oestrogen*
    casualty OR emergency
  • Combine subject headings, keywords that are synonyms or related terms, and truncated word stems with OR:
    Church OR Sikhs OR relig*

Because citations are added to CINAHL and PubMed before they are fully indexed, a search strategy including keywords will retrieve references most recently added to the databases.