LibGuides: Anatomy: Home

Search tips

Search for your terms in quotations to search as a phrase, adding keywords you're interested in: e.g. "Osteogenesis imperfecta" diagnosis or "brittle bone disease" prognosis

Reading Scholarly Journal Articles
You will find scholarly journal articles (a.k.a. peer reviewed or research articles) on these topics. These articles can be very long and are written for a specific expert audience. Fret not!

You can glean enough information by reading the abstract and introduction.
If you are still intrigued or want more from the article, read the conclusion (if there is one) and then skim the article paying special attention to the topic headings and graphs or other visuals and their captions.
If you find an article behind a paywall, email Sarah and she'll (likely) find the article for you for free.

If you start at a broad source like Kahn Academy or wikipedia, leave it at that: a start! Use what you learn there to refine your search in Proquest, JStor, and other databases and websites.

Summaries: Start Research Here!

CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a lot of basic information. After searching for a disease and reading the information, be sure to check out the links under "Learn more about..." near the bottom of the page.
NIH
Searching the National Institutes on Health website actually searches the 27 institutes and centers that make up the nation’s medical research agency.
Mayo Clinic
Search or browse for diseases on this non-profit site that provides simple information largely intended for a patient (i.e. layperson) audience.

Avoid commercial sites like webmd or healthline. If you want help evaluating a website, email Sarah!

Data

Advanced Google: Make google work for you! Search for a topic you're interested, then limit it by file type to target data. For example, try .xls or .csv
Use the advanced search in Proquest to find specific tdocument types: case study and statistics/data report are good places to start.

Databases

Health and Wellness This link opens in a new window
Great reference sources offering information intended for physicians as well as patients. Also find images and academic sources!
Proquest This link opens in a new window
Find many articles on your disease. You can limit by date (last 5 years) and by source type (scholarly journal) to limit your results.
JStor This link opens in a new window
Scholarly sources. Do an advanced search to limit by publication date.

Google

Use quotations to search for phrases, e.g. "Paget’s Disease"
Add the phrase "white paper" to find more examples of research papers that won't typically be found in databases
Use advanced search (under settings) to limit your search to a specific domain (e.g. .edu or .gov)
Use the minus sign to exclude words or phrases from your search (i.e. "paget's disease" -cancer) to get more accurate results

Citing using Noodletools

Citing sources for research is necessary! Why?

Keep track of your resources as you research in Noodletools. You'll need to cite resources within the paper AND include a bibliography.

Noodletools make it easy to do that. Most databases have a feature for you to export directly into noodletools!

Open Access & Google Scholar

Directory of Open Access Journals has access to thousands of free full-text articles.
PLOS One is a peer-reviewed open access mega journal published by the Public Library of Science.
Google scholar can be a useful tool in academic research, however, many of the articles you'll find there are behind a paywall. Please exhaust the library databases first before heading to google scholar!

More tips for accessing articles:

If you have checked in the databases, searched regular (free) google, and are not satisfied with your results, email Sarah the librarian to get some search tips and strategies.

If you do find an article behind a paywall, the librarians may be able to find it for you.

DO NOT PAY FOR ARTICLES ON THE INTERNET!