Friday, March 7, 2008

Health Information

Health Source includes many consumer health magazines and pamphlets on a wide variety of ailments. It also includes a Medical Dictionary and the Lexi-PAL Drug Guide for info on medications. To search within the Drug Guide, find Lexi-PAL on the publications list and then click 2007 and it will open to it's large alphabetical listing of drugs.

For in depth medical information for students and professionals, try the Academic/Nursing health source. This includes medical journals and bibliographic records for the popular titles such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Nursing. These articles with only bib records can be ILL.

Another good source for health info is MedlinePlus- search for diseases and ailments, drugs, and search in news articles or the medical encyclopedia or dictionary.
For easy to understand info check WebMD
Also check the reference section for our Medical and drug guides.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Magazines and More..MasterFile Premiere

You might be surprised at what is included in the MasterFile Premiere Database. It is a wide range of sources including everything from magazines such as People and the Saturday Evening Post to Reference books on Canada and Ancient Times, to Bibliographies on Davy Crockett and Georgia O'Keefe.


If a patron is looking for a specific magazine, click on publications and search for the title or browse the alphabet. Say they want to find an article that was in U.S. News and World Report. Click on the title and then click on search this publication. If they know an exact date, click on the year and then the issue. All articles from that issue will be listed. The search box will now include words that limited it to that issue. To search for a subject within such as George Bush it, add an "and George Bush" to the end and click search. All articles within that issue that include his name will be listed.

If someone has trouble finding the right words for a search, check out the subjects listed on the left side of the page. They are the terms used in the index, and clicking on one will bring up other articles indexed the same.

The new visual search is pretty impressive as well. It basically will show patrons the index and allow them to click through it to narrow their search. Check it out if you have time.

For more info on saving and emailing articles in Ebsco, see the Newspapers post.

Newspaper source

This database is provided by Ebsco Host and includes full text for 30 National and International newspapers including, The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, selected transcripts from CNN shows, and just bibliographic records for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Click on publications to view a full list of newspapers included. You can also search if you know the name of a paper. To browse an issue of the paper, click on the name and then choose the year and date you would like to look in.

To conduct a search, type in your search words in the box and scroll down to limit it by full text, date, and publication type. To save articles, add them to your folder by clicking the folder icon. The articles will remain in the folder until you log out of Ebsco. To save it for a future session, click on signin and create an account. The next time you log in, the articles will still be in the folder.

The articles can also be saved as webpages by clicking on the floppy disk icon. Finally, the articles can also be emailed to someone or yourself by clicking on the envelope icon.

The above steps for saving and emailing can be used in any Ebsco Host database.