University of Southern Mississippi



USM Libraries’

Research Guide for Nursing

|[pic] |Getting Started |

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| |Accessing Library Resources from a Distance ... p. 2 |

| |Checking to See if a Journal is Full-Text...p. 2 |

|Researching |[pic] |

| | |

|Finding the Right Article Database:  | |

|Finding a list of Article Databases for Nursing... p. 3 | |

|Selecting the Appropriate Nursing Database... p. 3-4 | |

| | |

|Developing a Search on Your Topic: | |

|Writing out Keywords... p. 5 | |

|Putting Your Keywords Together...p. 5 | |

|A Shortcut for Searching Word Variations...p. 5 | |

|Limiting by Date, Full-text or Peer-reviewed...p. 5 | |

|Sorting Through Your Results...p. 6 | |

Finding Your Article...

Using FindIt!...p. 7

Marking Records for Printing or Emailing...p. 8

Exporting to RefWorks...p. 8-9

Finding Books and Other Materials

Book Delivery...p. 10

Finding Books at USM Libraries...p. 10

How to Search ANNA...p. 10-11

|[pic] |Getting Materials |

| | |

| |Document Delivery Services |

| |What is Document Delivery?...p. 12 |

| |How Long Does it Take?...p. 12 |

| |How do I Make a Request?...p.12 |

|Additional Help | |

|Ask-a-Librarian...p. 12 | |

|APA Guides...p. 13 | |

|Plagiarism Tutorial...p. 13 | |

|Research Guide...p. 13 | |

Accessing USM Library Resources from a Distance

What’s Available

All of the library's electronic resources and services are available from off-campus to currently enrolled students, faculty, and staff. This includes about 170 article databases, encyclopedias and dictionaries, statistical handbooks, and biographies. These subscription databases as well as the reserve collections and document delivery services require student logins for access. ANNA, the library’s online catalog, and the Special Collection’s Digital Archives are available to all of the public who have Internet access.

How to Access from Off-Campus

Other than ensuring that your computer is set to accept cookies, no adjustments to your computer are necessary. Simply select the resource that you need and, when asked, type in your USM SOAR ID/Empl number (w######) and password. If you are a currently enrolled student or a current employee of the university and your USM ID number does not give you access to electronic resources from off-campus, please contact USM ITech at 601-266-HELP (4357).

Does USM Libraries Have Full-text Access to a Particular Journal?

You can easily search our E-Journal databases to find out if a particular journal is available full-text online and what years (volumes and issues) are available to you. From the library’s homepage , choose the E-Journal tab from the top of the blue search box. Type the name of the journal you are looking for and click “Submit.”

|[pic] |[pic] |

If the title is not available full-text, a link to ANNA, the library’s online catalog will appear. But if the journal is available full-text, the title will appear in red (see above right). Clicking on the title will give you info about the availability (see bottom left). Clicking the “Full text from” link will give you a page with a list of all the volumes and issues. You can look at single issues here or you can search the entire publication (see bottom right).

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Finding the Right Article Database

Finding Article Databases for Nursing

USM Libraries has over 170 discipline-specific article databases (nursing, education, science, etc.) These databases are used for finding citations to articles, papers and/or book chapters. To find a list of the library’s databases that cover the disciplines of “Health/Medicine/Nursing,” locate Databases & Resources by Subject on the library’s homepage then select “Health/Medicine/Nursing” from the drop down menu and click on “Submit.”

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Selecting the Appropriate Nursing Database

Once you have chosen “Health/Medicine/Nursing,” you will see a list of those article databases. For each database listed, a short description is given explaining: 1) what aspects of the discipline are covered (ie Biological Abstracts covers “biological and medical research findings, clinical studies, and discoveries of new organisms”), 2) whether or not it is a full-text database and 3) how many years are covered by the database.

Here are some selected databases available under “Health/Medicine/Nursing”:

Alt HealthWatch

Citations and full-text for 180 publications dating back to 1990 covering complementary and alternative medicine.

Biological Abstracts (BIOSIS)

Citations to international journals focusing on vital biological and medical research findings, clinical studies, including discoveries of new organisms. Some citations back to 1969.

CINAHL Full-Text

Citations and selected full-text coverage (back to 1982) of journals in nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines. Includes access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters.

Cochrane Library

The Cochrane Library contains high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Contains Systematic Reviews (interventions for a specific disease or other problem in health care), Controlled Trials, Methods Studies (reports on methods used in the conduct of controlled trials), Health Technology Assessments (studies of the medical, social, ethical and economic implications of healthcare interventions), and Economic Evaluations (about competing healthcare interventions around the world).

Consumer Health Complete

Abstracts and selected full text covering all areas of health and wellness from mainstream medicine to the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated medicine. Includes Evidenced-based Reports, Health Encyclopedias and Reference Books, Fact Sheets and Pamphlets, Drug and Herb Information and more.

Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition

Provides citations and full-text to scholarly journals in the medical disciplines. Coverage of nursing and allied health is particularly strong. Full text dates as far back as 1975.

MEDLINE

Citations to articles from more than 4800 journals in the biomedical field including medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Coverage extends back to at least 1985.

Natural & Alternative Treatments

Detailed information on more than 180 different conditions and the conventional and natural treatments used to treat them, over 200 herbs and supplements, plus drug-herb and drug-supplement interactions for more than 75 drug categories. To access, select Natural & Alternative Treatments from the list given.

Developing a Search on Your Topic

Writing out Keywords

To search in a database, you must enter keywords that describe what you are looking for. Before starting your search, it is a good idea to write out a statement about what you are looking for. From this thesis or statement, pull out all of the major keywords. For each of the keywords, write as many synonyms and word variations as possible. That way, if you are unable to find citations with your initial keywords, you can try some of the synonyms. Example:

Thesis/Statement - Ethical standards guide the professional behavior of pediatric nurses.

|Here are the Keywords:     |Here are some Synonyms:     |

|ethical |moral, ethics, ethically |

|standards |values, code, standard |

|professional |profession |

|pediatric nurses |pediatrics, nurse, nursing, RN, practitioner(s) |

*Tip: Some databases have a built-in Thesaurus, or Subject Terms and Descriptors to determine the appropriate terms to use. If nothing else, use the Thesaurus built into Microsoft Word.

Putting Your Keywords Together

Start your search by entering some of your major keywords in the given search box. When using more than one term or phrase, though, you must combine the terms or phrase using what are known as Boolean operators (and, or, not). The most used Boolean is AND. AND connects terms when you want both terms to be present somewhere in the citation/abstract. If you do not use AND, the words will typically be searched as a phrase.

Example search string using our thesis/statement above:

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A Shortcut for Searching Word Variations

The computer looks for the exact words you give it. So technically, to do a thorough search, you would have to do multiple searches using the different forms of each word (ethical, ethic, ethics, standard, standards, nurse, nursing, nurses). But it is possible to do in one stroke a search that looks for all the various word endings of your words. This is done with a trick called truncation. Almost every database allows you to use truncation and the truncation device is usually the asterisk (except in ANNA which uses a dollar sign $). To find the different word endings, simply type the root word and insert the asterisk at the end.

Example:     ethic*    (will find ethic, ethical, ethics, ethically)

nurs*    (will find nurse, nurses, nursing, nursery)

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Limiting by Date or to Full-text or Peer-reviewed

Look for an Advanced Search or Limiters to narrow your results:

By Date

To Full-text

To a Type of Material (i.e. journal article or book chapter)

To a Type of Study (i.e. case study, empirical study or peer reviewed)

To an Audience (i.e. general public or researcher).

A few limiters are often located on the basic search screen, but additional limiters can usually be found below the search box or on a separate page labeled "Advanced,” “Guided Searching" or "Limit your results."

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Sorting Through Your Results

When you type your search terms in the given box and click on Search, a list of results will appear - the database is set to automatically show only a brief citation. If the item is full-text, a link should indicate that (pdf or html). To see the full citation including an abstract of the article, click on the highlighted article title.

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Finding Your Article

Using Find It!

If the article is not full-text within the database you are currently searching, you will see a [pic]button (see previous image). Find It! brings up a box that will tell you if the full-text article is available in another database – if it is, it will give you a link to the article:

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If the article is not full-text in any of the other databases, you will be given the option to search Google and the library’s online catalog ANNA – it may be that the library subscribes to the paper version of the journal:

If the library owns the article in paper, you can come to the library to copy it. If you cannot get to the USM Libraries to copy the article, you may have the article emailed to you for a small fee. To do this from ANNA, click on the Document Delivery button at the top of the screen...

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then click “Access Illiad,” sign-in and click the button labeled “Eagle Express Article Delivery Request.” Fill out the form with the article citation information and click “Submit.”

If the Library Does Not Have the Article

If the library does not own the article and it is not available through Google, you may still use the “Document Delivery Services - Illiad” button located in “FindIt! to get the article – the library will make the request to receive the article from elsewhere and email it to you usually within 1-3 days.

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Marking Records for Printing or Emailing

Mark records that you want to print or email to yourself by clicking on the “Add” link or by √ check marking records (depending on the database). You can then print or email all the records at once by going to the top of the record list and looking for a link labeled “Marked Items,” “Folder” or “View Marked Records.” Most databases now have the option to email the citation in APA, MLA or Turabian Style.

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Exporting to Bibliographic Management Tools

In addition to the option of emailing marked citations and articles, most databases give an option to export the marked items to a Bibliographic Management program. Bibliographic Management tools are used to collect and store citations for utilization at some later date. The newer versions of reference management packages integrate with word processors (such as Microsoft Word) so that in-text references and reference lists or bibliographies can be generated automatically in the appropriate format as a paper is written.

Students can download a free tool called Zotero at . Exporting citations and articles into Zotero is easy. From the list of marked records, choose Export (or use the export icon)...

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and choose “Generic bibliographic management” or “Citations in BibTeX format” from the list:

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Finding Books and other Materials

Book Delivery

Books, DVDs, videos and other material owned by USM Libraries can now be delivered free of charge to students who live outside a specified zip code through a service known as Document Delivery (visit “Document Delivery Services” at the end of this handout for more information).

Finding Books at USM Libraries

A search for the library’s books and other materials such as DVDs, videos, pamphlets, e-books (full-text electronic books), etc. can be done through USM Library’s online catalog called ANNA. A link to ANNA can be found at the top right of the library’s home page.

Searching ANNA

A.) Author, Title, Subject Searching:

When you know the exact name of an author, title, or subject you are looking for you can use the Search for drop-down menu on the left of the search box to select "Author (last name first)" "Title begins with" or "Subject begins with." The Author, Title, Subject keyword allows you to search for parts of an author’s name, part of a title or part of a subject area.

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B.) Words Anywhere (Keyword)

Upon entering ANNA, the default search is a keyword or “Words Anywhere” search. Unlike a title search that only searches titles in a record or a author search that only searches authors in a record, a keyword search searches keywords that might show up anywhere in a record. For instance, a search of “pediatrics and standards” could produce this record in which the word Pediatrics was part of the publisher’s name and Standards was one of the subject terms:

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When doing keyword searches in ANNA, it is important to keep in mind the same rules discussed previously for doing searches for articles (see “Developing a Search on Your Topic”).

Document Delivery Services

What is Document Delivery Service?

Document Delivery (DD) has a variety of services for USM students. Through DD:

1) Students who live outside a designated zip code can have books from USM Libraries delivered to their home (first 10 at no charge).

2) For a minimal fee, students can have articles from the library’s collection scanned and sent to them via email.

3) Students can obtain library materials from one of the other USM Library campuses and have them delivered to another USM Library campus (campus-to-campus delivery)

4) Students can obtain library materials not available at USM Libraries and have them delivered to USM (article, book, dissertations)

How Long Does Document Delivery Take?

Articles are sent via email as .pdf files. Though there is so guarantee on the time of article delivery, typical delivery time is 1-3 days. Books, dissertations, and the like usually arrive at USM within ten to fourteen working days after a request is placed. In some instances the process may take longer.

How Do I Request Materials Through Document Delivery Services?

There is a link to Document Delivery on the library’s homepage under “Services.” From there, click on “Access Illiad” and enter your SOAR login and password. There is also a link to Document Delivery through the article databases under [pic] (see Getting Your Article in this handout.)

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Additional Help

Email Ask-a-Librarian

Maneuvering through the research process to find what you need can sometimes be a daunting task, particularly if you’re far away. USM Libraries maintains an Email Reference service called “Ask-a-Librarian.” If you are needing help with a research task or are having a technical problem using the library’s services, please email us! You’ll see the Ask-a-Librarian link on the library’s web pages or you can find it at

APA Style Guide

USM Libraries provides a printed and online guide to citing sources in APA Style. The guide is located at Be sure to note the instructions at the top of the guide.

APA Tutorial for Formatting and Parenthetical Citations

USM Libraries provides an online tutorial that walks students through the processes of formatting a paper and citing sources parenthetically (in-text) in APA. The section on formatting has screen captures for formatting using Microsoft Word. The tutorial can be found at

Plagiarism Tutorial

Plagiarism occurs when students summarize, paraphrase or quote other materials without giving proper credit. It is a serious offense in which students could receive an F in their course or expelled from school. Often students plagiarism without even knowing that they are doing it. USM Libraries provides a simple tutorial to help students understand how to appropriately cite sources within their papers. The tutorial can be found at

Research Literature Basics

USM Libraries provides an online tutorial that introduces students to the basics of research literature. The tutorial includes an Intro to Research (Empirical) Studies, Quantitative vs. Qualitative, Scholarly vs. Peer-Reviewed Journals, Popular vs. Trade/Professional vs. Scholarly, Primary vs. Secondary and Research Literature on the Web

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