Animal Alternatives Evaluate Your Search - Health Sciences Library - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dr. X tried using his keyword lists in PubMed MEDLINE, ALTBIB, and RePORTER, but he did not find very many items that were relevant to his search. What should he do now?*
- Nothing. If there's no information out there, there's not much he can do about it.
- Try some other databases. Maybe he's just not looking in the right places.
- Contact the Health Sciences Library (by coming to the reference desk, calling or emailing the library, or using the Live Online Help service) to set up a consultation with an expert searcher.
- Keep adding terms and tweaking his search strategy until he gets more results.
For the "reduction" part of his literature search, Dr. X wants to start by searching PubMed MEDLINE for studies that were similar to the protocol he is planning to use. Which of the following search questions is the best one for him to use?*
- (mice OR mouse) AND (cancer OR tumor) AND (brain OR cerebellum) AND (calories OR diet) - 56 hits
- "Mice"[MeSH] OR " Muridae"[MeSH] AND "Brain Neoplasms"[MeSH] AND "Diet"[MeSH] OR "Energy Intake"[MeSH] - 16984 hits
- ("Mice"[MeSH] OR "Muridae"[MeSH]) AND "Brain Neoplasms"[MeSH] AND ("Energy Intake"[MeSH] OR "Diet"[MeSH]) - 30 hits
- Any of the above - the MeSH database will automatically map terms and construct his search for him
After working on his keywords and search questions, Dr. X searched PubMed MEDLINE and found a good number of very relevant articles. What should he do now?*
- He's only gotten started. He has to search at least six other databases to satisfy the requirements in the law.
- The search of PubMed MEDLINE is a start, but he should also look for articles and other publications from some databases in other fields, including the specialized alternatives databases and databases of research in progress.
- A cursory search of one of the alternatives databases so that he gets some "soft science" results.
- Write up his results and move on to his laboratory work.
Dr. X wants to see what kinds of results he gets in some databases other than PubMed MEDLINE for the search he did in Question #2. What should he do?*
- Check the help pages in each database (as available) to find out what database idiosyncrasies may exist.
- Go back to his keywords list and select ones that are appropriate for each individual database.
- Rewrite his search question to fit the requirements of each database.
- All of the above
Dr. X used the following search question in several non-PubMed databases: "(mice OR murid*) AND (pain OR stress OR anesthesia OR euthanasia OR biopsy OR blood collection)". What complaint might the IACUC have with this search question?*
- No complaints. Even though it doesn't mention diet or cancer specifically, the real need is to find alternatives to using mice
- There aren't enough details about the experiment itself to narrow Dr. X's search to relevant articles.
- Dr. X only used terms for painful aspects of his research protocol, and none for the replacement of animals or the enrichment of their environment.
- By specifying "mice AND murid" as search terms Dr. X has unnecessarily restricted his search. He should drop these to widen his search.