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Example Searches
Getting Assistance
We're here to help!! Librarians are here to help you. You can talk to us in person at the reference desk, call us at 617 353-3704 during reference hours, email ask@bu.edu , or use our 24/7 live chat service: http://www.bu.edu/library/ask/index.html.
Indexes:
To find journal articles, you need to start with an index. Indexes provide you with information (a citation, an abstract, sometimes even the full text) about articles from many journals, usually within a broad field, such a medicine or history. Using an index is much easier and quicker than flipping through hundreds of journals looking for relevant articles.
http://www.bu.edu/library/research/indexes.html (online index in all subjects)
http://www.bu.edu/library/eresources/pt.html (online indexes in physical therapy)
Indexes organize information in a couple different ways. Some use a controlled vocabulary, such as a thesaurus or subject headings. Others do not, and rely on keyword searching. There are different strategies to successfully search in these two different types of indexes.
If an index has a thesaurus, or allows you to search by subject, it is using a controlled vocabulary. You need to identify the term that is used in that specific index for your topic. For example, a medical index with a controlled vocabulary might use the term "cerebrovascular accident" instead of stroke. If you were to search that index for "stroke," you might get some results where the word stroke was in the title or abstract, but you would miss a lot of other relevant articles that had been classified as being about the topic "cerebrovascular accident."
If an index has keyword searching, and no controlled vocabulary, you need to include synonyms and alternate spellings in your search. You would want to enter a search for "stroke or cerebrovascular accident," to ensure that you got all the relevant articles.
Web of Science
From the Physical Therapy e-resources page, choose Science Citation Index Expanded. You will get this screen:
Click on the tan Web of Science link.
There are three databases in this index: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. You can choose to search 1, 2 or all 3 of these at a time. For AT & PT questions, usually just Science Citation Index Expanded should be searched, although Social Sciences Citation Index may also include relevant articles. Uncheck Arts & Humanities Citation Index. For now, leave the dates as they are. In the future, you can use the date selectors to search for only the most recent articles.
There are two types of searches you can do in this database:
1) A CITED REFERENCE SEARCH.
In a cited reference search, you enter the author and publication year of a known article to find out where that article has been cited. One way to think of this is to imagine that you have one really great article on your topic. When that happens, you might look at the list of references at the end of that article to find more like it. The cited reference search is that process in reverse: you are finding what lists of references your really great article has been cited in.
There is a very strict format for entering authors' names in this database:
• Don't use commas.
• You will get more results if you replace the middle initial with an asterisk.
• If the last name is common, it is wiser to also include the middle initial, though you may miss some results. So you would use: Phet B* but Smith JK
This search will produce the following list:
Professor Cermak published more than one article in 1991, so you need to determine which one you want. The cited work column abbreviates journal titles. The hits column tells you how many times professor Cermak's articles have been cited. Her article in volume 11, page 271 of Occupational Therapy Journal of Research has been cited 9 times. Once you have marked the box(es) beside the correct article, click the "finish search" button, and you will get a list of articles that cite the article you have marked.
2) A GENERAL SEARCH
(instead of a cited reference search) in Web of Science will allow you to identify articles on a topic by searching for keywords. Because this index does not use a controlled vocabulary, avoid common words (of, in, the, etc), and try using synonyms and alternate spellings to make sure you don't miss relevant articles (e.g. search for old OR elderly OR aged; behavior OR behaviour).
Example:
First do a search for tennis elbow and wave therapy. Scroll to the bottom of the results to see how many results you get. Now do the search again as (leteral humeral epicondylitis OR tennis elbow) ANDwave therapy. Note that you get more results when you use synonyms, broader terms, and variant spellings.
SportDiscus
This is an example of an index which uses a controlled vocabulary. It's tempting to just type your search in as soon as you enter the index, but you will have more relevant results if you use the thesaurus. Click on the thesaurus tab (see below) to search for the term for your concept that is used in this index. Thesaurus terms vary from index to index, so one index might use stroke, and another might use cerebrovascular accident.
Build your search one concept at a time, then use the search history tab to combine concepts. For example:
-search the thesaurus for wave therapy
-choose the term it suggests for you (extracorporeal shockwave therapy), search it, and then get all the articles about that topic.
- now do a second search in the thesaurus for tennis elbow. Note that it is used for epicondylitis.
- search for the articles on that topic.Now use the search history tab to combine your wave therapy results with your tennis elbow results, to get the articles that are about wave therapy treatment of tennis elbow.
Use the index tab to limit results to English or to limit your search just to journal articles (document type).
Exceptiona Chile Education Resources and ERIC use the same interface as Sport Discus, but because they have different subject focuses, remember that their thesaurus terms will not be exactly the same as those in this database.
Getting the article:
Once you have used an index to identify an article, the next step is to find the actual full text so you can read it. There are two places you need to look. To see if we have an article available online, go to the e-journals list:
http://www.bu.edu/library/ejournals/
To see if an article you need will be in the library, you need to check the catalog:
Look for the name of the JOURNAL, not the title of the article (that's a very common mistake). Also, check to make sure that the year you need is available. Both online journals and our print holdings are not always complete.
We're here to help, please ask!
Sarah Struble (strubsa@bu.edu)