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• Step One
  
  The first step in finding scholarly/ peer reviewed articles for research is to use a database or index to find citations or references to articles that are on your topic.  Online databases list articles published in a particular set of journals after you do a search.  Keep in mind that for academic research you want to stick with scholarly articles published in journals like JAMA as opposed to news type articles in magazines like Newsweek.  Some databases will even allow you to limit your search to scholarly articles, also called peer-reviewed, juried, or refereed articles, by checking a box.

There are many resources available to find articles on health science topics.  Below are quick links to our databases related to health science.  Other databases might be useful depending on your topic.  For a full list of all the databases the library subscribes to, please visit the Find Articles in Databases by Title  or Find Articles in Databases by Topic webpages.

After you have found citations for articles that seem relevant to your topic, you need to access the articles themselves.  You can decide if they are relevant (articles you want) by looking at titles and abstracts (short summarys of the articles) in the database citation. 

Getting the article (Follow these steps until you have the article in hand):

To get the article electronically:

Some articles will be available in full-text or PDF format by simply clicking a link right in the database. 

If there is no direct link, look for an    link which searches for the article in any database subscribed to by CSULB and sometimes the COAST library catalog as well to let you know if CSULB has access to the article anywhere. 

If SFX doesn't find the article, you should still try to find the journal in COAST on your own. Search using the Journal Title, not the article title.  Make sure you know which year, volume, and number journal you need.

If it is available electonically online, you should be able to click a link and then either print the article or e-mail it to yourself. 

If the journal is not available electronically, get the article in paper:

Try a COAST search using the journal title, not the article title, to see if CSULB has the journal in paper copy. 

If it is available in paper form at CSULB you will have to come to the library to photocopy it.  Make sure you write down the ENTIRE citation (author, title, journal title, volume, number, year, pages) from the database and the call number from COAST. 

If it is not available electronically or at CSULB you can still request the article through ILLiad at The Beach Interlibrary Service .  This gets the article from another library either in paper or electronically and usually takes 7-10 days.  So be sure to start your research early!  If you are in a hurry, you can check other library's catalogs and possibly go to that library to get the article.

Finding Books

Coast is used for finding books and other materials available in the CSULB Library.  This is only a sampling of subject headings which may be used.  Keywords may also be searched.

Databases

Autism Data, the National Autistic Society's database of 17,000+ journal articles, papers, books and multimedia on autism, is open for all to access on the web. The contents include bibliographic records of all the items in The National Autistic Society Information Centre Library, together with the details of research articles on autism published in journals which are not part of their holdings. Every entry has an abstract and has been assigned keywords to help with searching. http://www.autism.org.uk/autismdata

Canary Database, developed by Yale School of Medicine, contains scientific evidence about how animal disease events can be an early warning system for emerging human diseases.   http://canarydatabase.org

KIDS COUNT State Level Online Data, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, was launched in Spring 2005 and includes around 75 measures of child well-being. Included in these 75 measures are the 10 key measures of well-being from their KIDS COUNT Data Book. The online database allows you to generate custom reports for a geographic area (Profiles) or to compare geographic areas on a topic (Ranking, Maps, and Line Graphs).  http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/sld/index.jsp

HSRR (Health Services and Sciences Research Resources) database offers searching and browsing of datasets and questionnaires that are useful for public health systems research (PHSR). This would include research involving the organization, financing, and delivery of public health services and the
impact of these activities on the population's health. The database includes brief descriptions of research resources and links to PubMed. It also includes URLs of providers for additional information or access to the resources. HSRR is not a repository of the actual resources.  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/hsrr_search/

PeriStats, developed by the March of Dimes Perinatal Data Center, provides free access to US, state, city, and county maternal & infant health data. http://www.marchofdimes.com/peristats/

Websites

There is much information available on the web.  However, because anyone can publish on the web, it is important to use critical thinking skills in evaluating whether the information you find is valid. Think about who put the information there and what their authority is to do so.  (i.e. are they a professor at a University or just Bob in his basement?)  It may be usefull to click on the "About" link or other authoring information or try this website for diagnostic tips http://www.mlanet.org/resources/medspeak/meddiag.html. Below are a few useful websites for health science.

American Public Health Association
http://www.apha.org

American Social Hygiene Posters 
http://special.lib.umn.edu/swha/IMAGES/home.html

American Society of Radiologic Technologists
http://www.asrt.org/

California Department of Health Services
http://www.dhs.ca.gov/

Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/
Created by Harvard University Library's Open Collections Program, Contagion offers insights into the history of medicine and historical context for current epidemiology. Materials in the collection include digitized copies of books, serials, pamphlets, incunabula, manuscripts, and materials from the Center for the History of Medicine.

DIRLINE
National Library of Medicine's DIRLINE (Directory of Health Organizations) offers an A to Z list of 8,500+ organizations concerned with health and biomedicine: http://dirline.nlm.nih.gov/help/dirline/a2z_A.html DIRLINE can also be searched for specific topics:
http://dirline.nlm.nih.gov/

Drug Information Online
http://www.drugs.com/

Factline: Tracking Health in Underserved Communities 
http://www.factline.org
Factline, a project of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and Meharry Medical College, takes its structure from the federal government's Healthy People 2010. Factline is designed for journalists, students, community workers, and policy makers to present solid facts from scholarly research on health disparities in a brief and understandable format. Each fact presented comes supplied with the reference from the literature where it is established; each page on the site is enhanced with Google and PubMed search mechanisms to allow the interested reader to go further on the subject in either the popular or the scholarly literature.

Healthy People
http://www.healthypeople.gov/
Healthy People is a set of health objectives for the Nation to achieve by decades. "It can be used by many different people, States, communities, professional organizations, and others to help them develop programs to improve health."

LifeWorks^TM
http://science.education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/feature/index.htm
NIH Office of Science Education LifeWorks^TM is an interactive career exploration web site for middle and high school students  and those helping them make decisions about their future, such as guidance counselors, science teachers, mentors, and parents. Users can browse for information on more than 100 medical science and health careers by title, education required, interest area, or median salary. Alternatively, the "Career Finder" can be used to generate a customized list of careers especially suited for users' skills and interests. The site complements its factual career data by highlighting true stories of successful people.

Long Beach Department of Health & Human Services
http://www.ci.long-beach.ca.us/health/

Los Angeles County Health Department
http://www.ladhs.org/

MedlinePlus
http://www.medlineplus.gov
MedlinePlus has extensive information from the National Institutes of Health and other trusted sources on over 650 diseases and conditions. There are also lists of hospitals and physicians, a medical encyclopedia and a medical dictionary, health information in Spanish, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials.

Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce
http://phpartners.org

Public Health Resources on the Internet
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/PUBL/internet.html

Quick Guide to Health Literacy
http://www.health.gov/communication/literacy/quickguide/

The US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion's Health Communication Activities Website includes a new Quick Guide to Health Literacy page.

Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness
http://www.phpreparedness.info/index.php
Web-based Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness provides a single point of access to essential information resources in public health and disaster preparedness, selected and cataloged by information specialists.

TOXMAP
http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov
TOXMAP is an interactive web site that shows the amount and location of reported toxic chemicals released into the environment on maps of the United States. It allows users to visually explore information about releases of toxic chemicals by industrial facilities around the United States as reported annually to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, http://www.epa.gov/tri/). It also integrates the map display with access to relevant bibliographic references and other data on these chemicals, providing a map-based portal to these resources. More information about TOXMAP can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/toxmap.html The FAQ http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/help/faq.jsp provides questions/answers to supplement the user's ability to understand the map displays and the data. 

University of Michigan's Documents Center Statistical Sources on the Web http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html 
24 broad subject categories (health, etc.) to choose from and then an alphabetical list of links within each subject. Most links allow access to anyone looking for statistics (a few of the resources restricted to UM students).

World Health Organization
http://www.who.int/en/
WHO is the United Nations specialized agency for health established in 1948. You can find information about world health news & statistics, health information for member countries, WHO publications, etc.

Other helpful subject guides:

Gerontology
http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/gerontology.html

Government Information
http://www.csulb.edu/library/eref/vref/govtdocs.html

Health Care Administration
http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/health_care/

Nursing
http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/nursing/

Psychology
http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/psychology.html

Tests & Measures
http://www.csulb.edu/library/subj/Finding%20Tests%20and%20Measures.htm
.

Other helpful campus websites: 

Health Science Department
http://www.csulb.edu/depts/hs/htdocs/

Email the Health Science Librarian

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