Community Health Library Resources

The intent of this exercise is to gain experience in locating the best scholarly resources on a health issue that you choose for an after school program.

There are four steps to the research process:

1. Thesis or topic statement.
Define your thesis in a brief, focused statement. If you don't know what you're looking for, you will not recognize it when you find it.  As you examine the resources on your topic you may either broaden or narrow the topic statement.
Topic Statement: 

Information to support a grant proposal on "__________________"  for an after school proposal for teens.

2. Identify keywords.
You will use them to search in the subject, keyword, title, abstract or text fields to locate material on your topic.  Do not use common words such as: the, with, when, if, effects, result etc.

Keywords:    _________________________   ________________        _______________

 
3. Select resources to locate material
For books and other media CLICnet is the database to use to find materials owned by the CLIC Libraries.

For articles Central Search searches multiple databases at once. It is a good starting point.

If you are unable to materials focused on your topic make an appointment with Liaison  Reference Librarian to assist you with a search strategy to locate the best resources on your topic.

4. Evaluate and select the best material
After you’ve gathered material select the best articles and web sites using the following six criteria for evaluating resources:

Authority
       Who is responsible for the work? (author, editor)
        What are their qualifications?     (degrees, associations, affiliations)
Currency    (When was it written and updated?)
Coverage
         What is the focus of the work?
         What aspects are covered and not covered?
         If it’s a web site is navigation within the web site clear?
Accuracy
         Are there references available for cross checking?
         Are sources of information listed for factual data?
Objectivity
         Are biases clearly stated? (political, ideological or funding)
         Are affiliations clearly noted?
         Who is the intended audience?
         Is there an introduction that explains these points?
Relevancy
         It is research or commentary, primary or secondary?
         Is this the best article or web site on the topic?

  

Selected Resources
from UST Libraries

Databases

Education:

Education Full Text indexes over 700 education journals, as well as some monographs and yearbooks. Over half of the journals are peer reviewed and almost half are available in full text. The indexing starts in 1983, and the full text starts in 1996. Approximately 75-100 of the titles are not indexed in ERIC.

The ERIC provides access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to the full text of reports in the ERIC Digital Documents library. Use the ERIC ED # to access ERIC documents in the ERIC Digital Documents library from 1993 to date.  

Health and Sports:

General Science Full Text Some full text of articles from professional science journals as well as popular science magazines. 1984- . 

Health Reference Center articles are on medicine & health topics; includes some full text. Current & prior 3 years

Physical Education Index features a wide variety of content from the scholarly and trade literature. Updated monthly, it covers topics ranging from physical education curricula, to sports medicine, to dance. Other coverage includes sport law, kinesiology, motor learning, recreation, standardized fitness tests, sports equipment, business and marketing, coaching and training, sport sociology/psychology, health education, and physical therapy. 1970-

PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, provides access to over 11 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1960's and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

SPORTDiscus with Full Text offers comprehensive, bibliographic and full text coverage of sport, fitness and related disciplines.

Social Science:

Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,600 serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews.

Sociological Abstracts abstracts (summaries) of journal articles in sociology & related disciplines; international scope; includes dissertations.

Journals

Journal of School Health is available Full Text in SPORTSDiscus from  08/01/1996 to 1 year ago.

Journal of Adolescent Health   is available from 1997 to present in ScienceDirect Journals

Citing Journal Articles

For each scholarly article note the following information to later cite the article or request it from another library:

Author(s)________________________________________________________________________

Article Title ______________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

Name of the Journal________________________________________________________________

Issue Date ____________________  Volume ___  Issue Number ____ Pages _____

RefWorks at the University of St. Thomas is provided for use by its students, faculty, and staff members.

RefWorks
What can I do with RefWorks?

Format bibliographies and citations automatically
Create and organize a personal research database online
Access your sources online from any computer, anywhere
Share your database online with anyone, anywhere

How do I get started?

Create a RefWorks account
Import citations from databases or library catalogs, or create them manually
Step by Step directions for individual databases
Organize and manage your citations in folders
Output citations and bibliographies instantly in any of hundreds of styles (APA, MLA, Turabian, etc.)

 

If you are unable find materials on your topic make an appointment with Earl Belisle, 651-962-5004 or embelisle@stthomas.edu

Selected non-UST Resources

   Finding Web Sites

Healthy People 2010
Healthy People 2010 challenges individuals, communities, and professionals to take specific steps to ensure that good health, as well as long life, are enjoyed by all.  Healthy People 2010 presents 467 objectives to improve the health of Americans by the year 2010. Because these objectives are national, not solely Federal, the achievement of these objectives is dependent in part on the ability of health agencies at all levels of the government and of non-governmental organizations to assess objective progress.  The Healthy People 2010 Midcourse Review is now available online.  This publication assesses progress toward achieving the Healthy People 2010 goals and objectives through the first half of the decade.

Finding other health related web sites:
Anyone can have a web site.  If you find what you need on Google fine.  But Google does not search everything on the Internet.  Google only searches the web pages in the Google database.  If you don't find what you want on Google try searching Dogpile.  Dogpile searches several search engines at once.

Use the keywords from your topic statement.

1.      Check the Dogpile results for non-Google hits.

2.      Select a web site that looks good.

3.      Answer the following questions.

1.      Can you tell who is responsible for the web page?  

2.      What are their credentials?    

3.      Would you use this Web site for research? 

4.      Are there additional links to pursue?

5.      When the page was last updated?

 

For each web site note the following information to cite it:

Author, Moderator, or other responsible person or organization.

Date of publication:

Title of the site:

URL:

Date of Access:

EMB
9/11/07