Searching Skills Toolkit

Caroline De Brún, Clinical Support Librarian, University College London, UK Nicola Pearce-Smith, Information Scientist, Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Oxford, UK

“This should work well as a required textbook in an evidence-based practice course.”  (Doody’s, 16 January 2015)

• Chapter 1 Introduction 1Evidence-based medicine 1Why search? 2How do you keep up to date 4Further reading 5Chapter 2 Where to start 6The hierarchy of evidence 6The hierarchy of searching 71. How much time do I have? 82. What type of publication am I looking for? 103. Is my query about a specific topic? 13Chapter 3 Clinical information: sources 15Medical libraries 15The Internet 15Chapter 4 Searching the Internet 26Search engines and directories 26Evaluating material found on the World Wide Web 29Saving useful websites 35Chapter 5 Formulating searchable questions 37Types of question 37Breaking down the clinical scenario 38Identifying keywords 39Further reading 39Chapter 6 Building a search strategy 41Identifying synonyms 41Synonym sources 42Truncation and wildcards 42Combining terms (using Boolean operators) 46Construction of the final search strategy 47Chapter 7 Free text and thesaurus searching 50Free text searching 50Thesaurus searching 51Chapter 8 Searching healthcare databases 55Finding the evidence: key steps 55Medline 57PubMed 57Ovid Medline 64CINAHL 68Cochrane Library 73Further reading 80Chapter 9 Refining search results 81Limits 81Methodological filters 85Clinical Queries 86Sensitivity versus specificity 87Systematic reviews 89Further reading 90Chapter 10 Saving citations 93Logbooks 93Reference management software 94Chapter 11 Citation pearl searching 98Related items 98Author search 99Keywords 99Journals 100Snowballing 100Alerts 101RSS feeds 101Chapter 12 Quality improvement and value: sources 102Examples of quality improvement and value questions 102Current awareness 102Searching for evidence on quality improvement and value 103Other useful sources of information 105Networks 113Further reading 114Chapter 13 Patient information: sources 115Shared decision-making 115Poor quality health information 116Good quality health information 116Appraising online consumer health information 117Trusted information sources 118Rarer conditions 120Third-party assistance 121Patient decision aids 121Writing patient information 122Keeping up to date with patient information 122Further reading 123Chapter 14 Critical appraisal 124Definition 124Critical appraisal checklists 124Further reading 125Chapter 15 Glossary of terms 126Appendix 1 Ten tips for effective searching 135Appendix 2 Teaching resources 138Record your favourite resources 142Index 143