This guide is intended as a research tool to help you locate background information, books, articles, and internet/web links on a variety of anatomy & physiology topics.

Tertiary/Background information; Books

Available in the library's reference area:

• Biology of Disease
• Cecil Textbook of Medicine (see ‘neurology’)
• Encyclopedia of Addiction (see ‘brain and addiction’; see ‘genetics and addiction’)
• Encyclopedia of Pain
• Foundations of Neurobiology
• Nervous System and Sense Organs
• Physician’s Desk Reference 2010 (PDR)
• Science of Pain

Tertiary/ Background Information; Online Sources

• http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/index.html
  NYTimes; search by disease or topic; offers in-depth overviews including risk factors, genetics, treatment, currents news & research.
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/
  Science Daily; search by disease or topic; science newspaper; highlights current ‘Health & Medicine News’. Search by A-Z disease or keyword index; links to abstracts and full text articles sometimes provided.
• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/healthtopics.html
  Guide to health topics provided by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health; overviews, research, treatment and links to journal articles within PubMed provided
• Gale/Health Reference Center
  Provides access to full text articles from magazines and newspapers (Follow instructions below to access database; search by topic and select ‘Magazines’ or ‘Newspapers’ link at top)
  Use the library home page; choose; Finding Articles; choose Biology & Science; choose Health Reference Center Academic

Secondary Information Review Articles (found within scientific journals using online databases)

• Medline/Ebsco
  National Library of Medicine; provides abstracts and full text links to 4,800 biomedical journals; search by disease or MeSH (Medical Subject Heading); scroll down and check the box for ‘Review Articles’.
• Academic Search Premier/Ebsco
  4,650 full text journals; search by disease; try adding ‘review’ into a search term field.
• PubMed Central: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
  U.S. National Institutes of Health; free full text journal collection; search by disease; use ‘advanced search’ option and limit search to ‘Research/Review Articles’.
• TIP: Don’t forget that the library also has a large collection of medical and scientific journal articles available in print on the 2nd floor. These include titles such as: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA); Lancet; New England Journal of Medicine; Nature.

Primary Research

To access the databases below, if the link is not provided, use the library home page and select; Finding Articles; then select; Biology/Science

• PubMed:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ National Library of Medicine; includes 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals and biomedical articles; includes links to full text articles if available; VERY large database.
• Gale/Health Reference Center:
  includes over 8,900,000 articles (many full text) , both tertiary and primary peer reviewed from nursing and allied health literature (select ‘Academic Journals’ link).
• TIP: AND, all databases listed above in Secondary/Review Articles Section above to locate review articles should be used to locate primary papers, but don’t limit search to review/overview articles. As a reminder, these databases are:
• PubMed Central located at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
  Continue to use the ‘Research/Review Articles’ option. Once in your search, remember that you are now looking for primary articles, not review articles, for this portion of the assignment.
• Medline
• Ebsco/Academic Search Premier
• Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=searchArticles
  Provides full text access to scientific and medical journals published online
• Terms which may be useful to include with your search; Pair with your disease term;
  ‘gene’ or ‘genetics’; ‘receptor’; ‘cell’ or ‘cell cycle’ or ‘cell division’ or ‘cell death’ or ‘cellular basis’; ‘signaling’ or ‘signal processing’; ‘circuitry’; ‘molecular mechanism’

• It can be difficult to identify the peer reviewed/empirical/original work of researchers in a particular field. This is the work that may have been summarized in the review articles or referenced earlier in the tertiary articles.
• Look for the format of primary/scientific work: Title; Authors; Abstract; Introduction; MMM (Methodology/Materials/Methods); Analysis of Results/Discussion; References.
• It might be helpful to think about adding variables/other terms to your search; otherwise you may have too many articles. Consider treatment, specific genes or cellular mechanisms as terms to combine for better search results.

Tips: How do you decide which primary articles are the most important, the ones to include in your paper?

• As you are beginning your research, take time to carefully examine tertiary and review articles. Make note of researchers whose names continue to appear. Often researchers will devote most of their lives to the study of (or aspect of) a particular disease and you will notice that the same names reappear.
• Background and review articles will often cite the most important historical research in addition to more recent breakthroughs, so make note of research which is referenced often and follow links.
• Literature reviews, which are found at the beginning of primary papers, can be an excellent starting point because they summarize previous primary research.
• Sometimes an older paper may continue to be the seminal research on a disease. Read through review articles and research carefully.
• Don’t choose the first articles you see! Be picky. If you find that a primary article you want to use for your paper isn’t available full text within the databases provided above please see a librarian for help.

SW/1/11