Searching Guide

Search Engines | Professional Databases

Search Engine Introduction

Internet is the largest information resource in the world. Unlike library resources, internet resource is not organized. How can we get the relevant information from this “information sea”? Search engines can help us. Usually search engines crawl the internet looking for new web pages. They index certain part of the internet sources so that you can access. None of them can cover the whole internet sources. Click here to see the difference between Google, Yahoo, and Msn.

Evaluating Internet Resources

How can we get high quality information from internet? Here is some advise for you:

• Scope
• Breadth : Does the resource cover every aspect of the subject or include related topics?
• Depth : What is the audience level of the subject?
• Time : What is the certain period of time the resource cover?
• Format : Is there any limit for the resources?
• Content
• Accuracy : Is the information reliable? Who has responsibility for the accuracy of the information presented? Compare the information coming from other resources based on your knowledge.
• Authority : Who is responsible for the resources? Is the major creator clearly identified?
• Currency : Is there a date stating when the website was modified or created?
• Uniqueness : Is these resources be available from other sources? Some resources can't be reached, for example, some publications or databases need to be subscribed first.
• Purpose : What is the purpose of the website? Business? Study? Research? …
• Reviews : What about the reviews coming from other resources?
• Workability
• User friendliness : Is it easy to use? Is there any guide or help information available?
• Required computing environment : Is there any special software requirement for these resources?
• Searching : Can information be retrieved from the resource? Is the search engine provided by the website effectively?
• Browsability and organisation : Is this website organized appropriately? Is there any site map to show the structure of the whole website?
• Connectivity : Is this website often overloaded or offline? How long does the pages' loading take?
• Cost Does these resources cost money?

• CINAHL

It is the primary database for journals covering nursing and allied health disciplines as alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health, health information management, and health services administration. CINAHL indexes articles from over 1700 journals with abstracts available from more than 900 of these. Full text is included for a select group of state nursing journals, newsletters, government publications, standards of practice, research instruments, and patient education material. Years of coverage are 1982 through 2004. It produced by CINAHL information systems.

CINAHL Tutorial

• PubMed

It is the world's largest single biomedical database produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), USA . Nearly 4,000 journals from over 70 countries are indexed and the 12 million references go back to 1966. Indexing keywords are known as MeSH terms. The MeSH term, alternative medicine, is linked to 26 main headings.

PubMed Tutorial