This guide is to support the student researchers in the Global Health Capstone course. For some of you, this may be the first time you have needed to do more complex research and to help give you a quick start to understanding the process and where to look for info, the following is a preview of what to expect from the different sections of this guide.
- To get more comfortable using the databases, it helps to have a plan and the Search Strategies section points to important concepts and tools to use in online searching, such as boolean operators, truncation, and subject headings or descriptors that you can then use to locate books and journal articles. It also explains the difference between primary and secondary sources.
- To look for books, look in the "Find Books" section. A good way to begin searching for books is to use UC Library Search but many of our subject-specific databases will also point you to books on your topic.
-- Theses and Dissertations are also featured on the "Finding Books" section. Although they are unpublished book-length works, they are often important sources of original information and their bibliographies can lead you to other sources.
- To locate scholarly journal articles, use the various databases listed in the "Find Articles" section.
-- If you need some tips on finding the full-text of the articles you find, see the sub-tab Getting Full-Text Articles.
-- Did your professor say use scholarly articles and you are not sure what those are? Check out the sub-tab Scholarly? Authoritative? Peer-Reviewed? Which One do I Have?
- For statistics, the "Find Health Statistics" points to various places and strategies to find local, state, US, and international health statistics.
- The "United Nations Resources" section points to many resources created by and about the UN (which provides much information about global health and related issues).
- The "Assistance with Writing, Citing, and Managing Citations" points point to various tools to help you with writing and keeping track of the sources you use.