Title:
Health Source Plus, via NCLive
Rationale for selection:
Given the topic of my search, this seems like a database likely to
have numerous resources on the health affects of running (I hope!).
I think that the scope of documents relating to my topic might be limited,
so I am expanding my search to include related terms and to search within
full-text articles.
Evaluation of source:
Format/means of access: Available on the Web, via UNC Library’s
Electronic Indexes and Databases list, http://unclib.lib.unc.edu/eid/eresources.html,
also available off campus with a 9 digit student or faculty ID. It
is also available at most academic, public, and state libraries in North
Carolina
Scope:
Content/topics covered: With this database you can search for information on many health topics including the medical sciences, psychology, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine, health care law and general health.*
Time period covered: Indexing, 1984-present; Full-text, 1990-present, updated daily.*
Types of material covered: Health Source Plus provides abstracts and indexing for over 520 consumer health, nutrition, and professional periodicals. Over 240 periodicals are covered in full-text as well as over 1,000 health pamphlets. Also included is USP DI Volume II, Advice for the Patient which provides patient-oriented drug information in lay language and 17 health books published by the People's Medical Society.*
Geographic/language coverage: United States/English
Authority: Created and updated by EBSCO Host, a 50 year old Information Service (http://www-us.ebsco.com/home/default.asp)
Access points/indexing: This site is well indexed. With each results, it gives the subject headings and sub-headings under which the article is found. This is a helpful tool in further limiting or broadening a search. Also, with each record there is a "find more" option which uses the subject terms of the active article to search the database for similar records. This is a useful way of expanding a search if you find a very pertinent article, and it represents a good depth of indexing.
Abstracts and Full Text Availability: Full citation is available for all citations, with abstracts for most, but not all citations. Full text is available for some results.
Special Features: The database provides several search options, the most useful of which were the advanced search and the natural language search. It also allows for a subject search, which I eventually used after initially just using the advanced search mode. A nice feature of this database is that it also offers related web-sites, in addition to the normal textual sources. The database allows you to limit a search to numerous different areas, and this was helpful for me in narrowing my search to a manageable number of results. There was also an option to limit the search to articles with illustrations, certain numbers of pages, and location of publication. All these might be handy given a specific searching need. Also the wide range of searchable materials is a big plus, as it will make the return of a variety of results more likely.
Search strategy:
This is the second database I searched, and the terms I used in my
first search were affective, so I decided to use them again, with the exception
of the search terms "health" or "medical" since this is a health database:
1) running or jogging
2) effects or results
Set 1: searched for “running OR jogging” in all fields = 4,448
Set 2: searched for “effects OR results” in all fields = 10,000+
Set 3: searched for “1 AND 2" = 336
I thought this was too many results, so I tried limiting the search
to abstracts.
Set 4: "1 AND 2" in abstracts = 329
This was still too many, so I limited the search to subject
Set 5: "1 AND 2" in subject = 1
This was too narrow, so I decided to search within the subject "running"
Set 6: "DE Running" AND "effects OR results" = 46
This was a good set of results, so I browsed the abstracts and kept
those I thought appropriate
Set 7: Keep 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 26, 30, 31, 40,
42, 43
I then decided to use the Natural Language Search option to see what
kind of results I would get.
Set 8: "effects of running" in natural language = 28
I browsed these results and kept the ones which were appropriate.
Information found:
My search of this database yielded 23 promising hits, which I limited
by browsing the abstracts of my search results in Sets 6 and 8. It
provides a wide-range of articles discussing research in my search topic.
An important observation is that there was some overlap in my natural language
search and my keyword search. However, there were also some unique
results returned by the natural language search. In the future I
think I will perform various types of searches in order to return the most
relevant results. All in all, I think this was a very good database
for my topic. It returned a variety of useful results.
*Information taken from vendor website: http://www.epnet.com/database.html#hp