Feinberg Library Virtual Tour

Library Catalog 

Library Research Databases

Research Guides by Subject 

Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery

Search Engine Directory

Search Engines Explained

Boolean Searching
(from University at Albany Libraries) 

Evaluating Resources
(from Milner Library at Illinois State U.) 

Primary vs. Secondary Sources (from librarian Tim Hartnett)

Citing Sources

Plagiarism:  How to Avoid It (from Indiana University at Bloomington)

COURSE RELATED RESEARCH INSTRUCTION

Course NUR 437
Professional Issues

Course Instructors: Sayward, Bongiorno, and Wells
Session Librarian: Holly Heller-Ross
Session Date: Monday February 07 and 09, 2005

This session was developed to help you begin work locating relevant nursing research. Library and information research, like nursing research, is best handled through a series of flexible steps. This series of research steps keeps you moving forward with your task and provides guidance along the way.   First identify and define an issue, then conduct a literature review by searching the online catalog, research journal databases, and the Internet, then evaluate your resources. 

Identify & Define An Issue :

You can identify important issues in nursing by searching through reference books (including online versions), looking through recent issues of scholarly nursing/medical journals, or by looking through the health sections of popular magazines and newspapers (Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Press-Republican). You can also check nursing association web sites, such as the ANA or NYSNA web sites. If you identify an issue this way you are already started on your definition and description and already have one source for your literature review. For more specific pro's and con's of an issue, try searching the Opposing Viewpoints database. It's not considered scholarly research, but can get you started with a project.

Reference resources and your academic textbooks then provide more background and statistical material to help you understand the issue and why its relevant and worth studying. Look through your local site or hospital library's nursing collection for more information. It's good to ask a librarian for help with this part, we can point you to the right resources very quickly.

Conduct the Literature Review:

The Feinberg Library web pages can point you in the right direction by providing access to the library catalog, general and subject research databases, and Internet search engines and directories. Suggested subject research databases for nursing (jump to them from the Electronic Search Services link on the left!). 

You may often need to go beyond nursing literature into the subject fields of Psychology, Sociology, Medicine, Education, Politics or other disciplines to find information on your  issue. The library also offers research databases for these areas of study and you use them in the same way.

For example if you search CINAHL for nursing ethics you get 2033 articles. If you limit to peer reviewed articles you get 1033 articles. If you search nursing ethics and cesarean section and limit to the last three years you get 4 articles.

Search the Internet:

The Library Research Guide for nursing and allied health will lead you to several good internet sites to help you get started. You can also search using any Internet search engine such as Yahoo! or Google. Other Internet starting points include the Emporia University List of electronic journals in nursing at http://ejw.i8.com/nursee-j.htm or their list of nursing Internet sites at http://ejw.i8.com/nurseweb.htm