- (630) 942-3364
- Ask a Librarian
- IM (askcod1)
Marge Peters . (630) 942-2337 . petersm@cod.edu
FIND A TOPIC
Think about what interests you -- an issue in your personal life, a disease that runs in your family, a topic in the news.
Sources for lists of health/medical topics (list courtesy of Debra Kakuk, Health Librarian):
MEDLINEplus
Provides access to 700 health topics, medical encyclopedias and dictionaries, and links to self-help groups, clinical trials, preformulated PubMed searches, lists of hospitals and physicians health and information in Spanish and other languages
http://medlineplus.gov/
Healthfinder
The U.S. government's directory of authoritative health information including links to online journals, medical dictionaries, and prevention and self-care information
http://www.healthfinder.gov/
MayoClinic.com
Easy-to-understand information on health and medical topics, all reviewed for accuracy by Mayo Clinic experts. (A service of Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research)
http://www.mayoclinic.com/
USE BOOKS AND VIDEOS
Click on COD Library Catalog (http://lrc.cod.edu)
Do a SUBJECT search on your topic.
Both books and audiovisual materials will be listed in the catalog.
GOOD REFERENCE WORKS!
Gale Encyclopedias:
Also available in the Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Virtual Library
Link to Debra Kakuk's extensive list of Reference sources for Health and Medicine: http://www.cod.edu/library/libweb/Kakuk/consumer_health.htm#books
RESEARCH YOUR TOPIC IN MAGAZINES, JOURNALS AND NEWSPAPERS
Click on Article Databases.
Use these databases:
Each of these databases has a slightly different way of searching . Most allow you to limit to ONLY full text articles, only scholarly journal articles, and to a particular time frame.
SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES
Yahoo is an example of a human-indexed directory of the internet, along with search engine features Health sources can be found at http://dir.yahoo.com/Health
Link to Debra Kakuk's list of Consumer Health Internet Sites. http://www.cod.edu/library/libweb/Kakuk/Consumer_Health/consumerwebsites.htm
Search engines , such as Google, or Ask.com match key words via software programs called "robots" or "spiders". See links from Library Home Page. Most programs only require the entry of all terms wanted--it only returns pages that include all of your search terms. For a better search, use quotation marks ("....") around phrases: "West Nile Virus"
Evaluate health websites carefully: Link to Tips on finding and evaluating health sites: http://www.cod.edu/library/libweb/Kakuk/consumer_health.htm#fi
SEARCH FOR STREAMING VIDEO
Go to Yahoo at http://video.yahoo.com. Enter term(s)you want presented in video. Be sure to watch the timing --some of these streaming videos are over one hour in length.
Go to Blinkx at http://www.blinkx.com and type in term(s) you wish to match. Click on the thumbnail of videos you wish to see. Sometimes ads precede the content if on an advertiser-sponsored channel (Fox and others). YouTube videos may load slowly, if at all.
Use Google's advanced video search: http://video.google.com/videoadvancedsearch Enter words or a phrase to search. Click a choice for Language (English) and Duration (Short < 4 minutes probably best).
