LibGuides: Search Tips: Plan Your Search

Plan Your Search

Steps for Planning Your Search

You will get better results if you plan your search before you get started. This includes choosing appropriate databases and strong search terms.

Choosing which databases to search

Make sure the focus of the database fits your topic. You can find the full list of databases on the Library's database page.

Check out these tables for a quick overview of the key databases available through the library

AH: Allied health

AP: Administration & policy

NM: Nursing & Midwifery

M: Medicine

P: Pharmacy

PH: Public health

Major databases

	Subject	Content
MEDLINE	AH AP M NM P PH	The premier database for all health research
CINAHL	AH NM PH	The authoritative resource for nursing and allied health, and for qualitative research
EMBASE	AH M P PH	A major biomedical database
SCOPUS	Multidisciplinary	A major multidisciplinary resource
Web of Science	Multidisciplinary	A large science focused database, including health sciences and genetics
PsycINFO	Mental health	Psychological, social, behavioural and health sciences
Ovid Nursing database	NM PH	Ovid’s Nursing and Midwifery database
Proquest	Multidisciplinary	Suite of databases including theses and dissertations. Strong social work content
EBSCO	Multidisciplinary	Suite of databases, including some of the above

Smaller specialist databases/resources

	Subject	Content
UpToDate	M P	For use at point of care. Evidence based clinical topic summaries
Clinical Evidence	M P	High quality, independent health evidence
Cochrane Library	M P	Large comprehensive database of systematic reviews on select topics
Informit	New Zealand/Australia	Australian health journals, mostly not indexed on Medline
INNZ	New Zealand/Australia	Selected New Zealand publications, including newspapers, magazines
EBSCO Aus/NZ Reference Centre	New Zealand/Australia	Australasian journals, magazines, newspapers, news, reference books and images
AMED	AH	Complementary medicine, palliative care, allied health
PEDro	AH Physiotherapy	Evidence based resource for physiotherapy

Identifying the main concepts in your topic

Research often starts with a question. Pick out the key concepts in your question.
You don’t need those small words like in, the, on, for.

In our example:

Do sound levels in neonatal intensive care units impact on weight gain of premature babies?

Your key concepts might be:

Concept 1	Concept 2	Concept 3
Neonatal intensive care	Sound levels	Weight gain

Brainstorm

Brainstorm alternate spellings, synonyms, drug names, and medical terms for your concepts. You could use an online thesaurus, Wikipedia, your preferred search engine, or resources like UpToDate to get ideas for search terms.

Here are some additional concepts for our example:

Concept 1	Concept 2	Concept 3
Neonatal intensive care	Noise levels	Weight gain
NICU	Sound levels	Growth rates
Premature babies	Decibels	Failure to thrive
Premature infants	Noise disturbance