Search Tips
Finding authoritative, timely, and relevant research and patient care information is critical for nurses and other healthcare providers. It can also be challenging and time consuming. Strengthening your search skills will benefit your personal, academic, and professional lives, and most importantly, the lives of your patients.
- All databases have similar and unique features. Find out what they are by reviewing the main search screens (advanced and basic).
- Use the Advanced Search option for the best search results, as this gives you more search strategy options.
- Become familiar with discipline specific terms. Selecting the appropriate search terms can be challenging.
- Ex: treatment = therapy or interventions or outcome; symptoms = diagnosis; cause = etiology, etc.
- Conduct a search using different terms and limit options.
- If you are conducting an in-depth search, there is NO single search strategy that will retrieve all of the relevant information.
- To search through the entire magazine/report, select all text/entire document field limit options and then use special features, such as
- Truncation: use an * to shorten a word for singular, plural, or other endings. Ex: child* = child, children
- Concept, phrase: use quotation marks " " around the words. Ex: "sports concussion"
- Additional shortcuts are detailed in database Help sections.
- Note: Searching the entire document is NOT available in all databases. For example, PubMed is a citation only database.
- To read the article immediately: Select Limit Results to Full-Text.
- To find peer-reviewed articles: Select limit to Peer-Reviewed/Scholarly/Academic Journals
How to Search for More
- Pick a resources type in the tabbed box
- Click on library search engine link within the tab
- Log in to the Library if necessary
Library Login
Library Access
(articles, eBooks, etc. from databases OR library search engine)
(loans, renewals, requests from the library search engine)
Username = your College email address
Password = your Canvas password
Each Database has many Articles:
- Peer-reviewed Articles
- Reference Encyclopedia Entries
- News Articles
Choose a Database from our A-Z List
Get physical books from all over Florida
Search a keyword(s) in Primo (the new library search engine) and select one of the following if necessary:
- 'Place a Hold' to reserve a book from another campus
- 'UBorrow' to reserve a book from another school
Not finding what you need? Request a book through Interlibrary Loan
Access nearly 50,000 ebooks
Search a keyword(s) in Primo (the new library search engine) and select "eBook" as resource type.
Choose a database:
Find reputable web sources
Use Google Scholar to focus on info from experts: