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Finding Health Information: A Path Through the Maze: Intro

This tutorial gives you an overview of key basic concepts and techniques for accessing health information using several online tools and databases.

Created by Health Science Librarians

Objectives

By the time you complete this tutorial, you should be able to:

  1. Describe strategies for choosing and using tools to find information on a disease or topic
  2. Describe features of the following tools:
    • UNC-Chapel Hill Catalog
    • Health Source (Nursing/Academic Edition)
    • MedlinePlus
    • PubMed
  3. Be able to access and use the tools listed above
  4. Know where to go for help if you are having difficulty

Contents

This tutorial includes the following main sections:

Cases presents three situations where health information is needed.

Strategy describes strategies for accessing health information and introduces concepts of boolean searching.

Catalog describes basics of using the UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries catalog.

Databases explains how to access and use the UNC-Chapel Hill E-Research Tools page.

Resources describes important online health information resources: MedlinePlus, PubMed, and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition.

Peer-Review goes in detail to describe what makes a journal "peer-reviewed" and explain how to limit searches to peer-reviewed articles.

Quiz includes multiple-choice questions to test your knowledge of the material covered in this tutorial. Each time you answer a quiz question, you get immediate feedback.

This tutorial provides basic concepts and instructions.

How to Use this Tutorial

  • We will use examples from three case studies to help explain why and how you would use the key resources in health sciences research
  • After you've finished working through the tutorial, go to the quiz to test your knowledge of material. Once you finish the quiz, you will be able to print out a certificate showing that you have completed the Finding Health Information tutorial.

Good luck!