Pub Med and the Cochrane Library After this

Pub. Med and the Cochrane Library After this course you will be able to: • • • Describe what makes Pub. Med different from other databases Use filters to refine a basic search on Pub. Med Use the advanced search feature on Pub. Med Use the Clinical Queries feature on Pub. Med Use the browse function on the Cochrane Library Use the basic search function on the Cochrane Library

Pubmed. gov Main search box is at the top of the screen You will get suggestions for your search based on the records on the database Either press Return or click on Search to carry out your search

Using filters Once you’ve done your search you can use the filters on the left-hand side of the screen to reduce the number of your search results. You can filter by: • • Type of study Date of study Language of study Age groups as well as lots of other ways!

Using filters - II Here I’ve used the filters to limit my search on “Insomnia Therapy” to: • Clinical Trials • With full-text freely available • Published in the last five years • On adults aged between 19 and 44

Using Advanced Search You can find Advanced Search underneath the main search box Advanced Search allows you to: • • • Be more specific and narrow down your results Be more flexible by building up a search strategy and combining it in different ways Look for articles in particular journals or by particular authors

Using Advanced Search - II Using Add to history to build a search Using Add to history to build your search will allow you to combine searches together to get the best results Type your search here To build a search click here NOT on the Search button!

Using Advanced Search - III You can use OR to search different terms at the same time

Using Advanced Search - IV You can use # to combine different lines from your search strategy

Using Me. SH terms MESH – Medical Subject Headings is the way Pub. Med indexes its articles You can search them by selecting them from the smaller, left-hand drop-down box Click here and select ‘Me. SH terms’ from the drop-down men You can also use the drop-down boxes to search for articles from a particular journal or by a particular author

Downloading results from Pub. Med Downloading results is Pub. Med’s Achilles heel – you don’t get a nice PDF or Word document like you do with some other databases. But it IS possible 3. Choose which option you prefer. File or E-mail are best 2. Click on Send To 1. Use the tick boxes to select which articles you want to download

My NCBI You can register yourself for a My NCBI account. This allows you to: • Set up alerts • Add records to your bibliography • See what full-text articles you can get from the JET Library

My NCBI - II You can register by clicking on the link on the log-in screen

My NCBI - III Once you have done your search you can: 3. Use Send to to create a bibliography of articles 1. Create an alert for new articles based on your search … and if you stay logged in as yourself you can also see searches you have done previously and re-run them 2. See what articles are available to you locally

The Cochrane Library - I • Best place to look for systematic reviews • Also contains clinical trials • Compiled by volunteers from all over the world • Completely free – no user-name of password needed

The Cochrane Library - II You can search using the search box in the top right-hand corner of the screen or use the Browse button to search through the different topics

The Cochrane Library - III Your results are broken down into systematic reviews done by the Cochrane group; reviews done by other groups and clinical trials – you can read the full text of all the Cochrane reviews

The Cochrane Library - IV You can also browse through the topics by subject area until you find what you are interested in

The Cochrane Library - V Downloading results from the Cochrane Library You can either click on the title of the reviews and download either the whole review or a summary - or download a list of reviews and trials to look at later To download a list: 2. Click on Export selected 1. Select the reviews you want using the tick boxes 3. Leave the Export type as PC and click on Export Citation