New to Searching?
First learn how to form a good question, then you are ready to check out these helpful HSL tutorials for tips on conducting an effective and efficient search!
Watch more tutorials on CINAHL and OVID Medline.
What about Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is a search engine, not a database. It is easy to use for the beginner, but the limited search functionality often returns results that are not as on topic as you might like.
Since it is easy and returns so many results, it provides an 'instant gratification' that often leads the searcher to believe they've done an exhaustive search, when really they could be missing many important studies.
Core Public Health Databases
- CINAHL This link opens in a new windowCoverage: 1981- Present
Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature. Professional literature of nursing, allied health, biomedicine, and healthcare. - Embase This link opens in a new windowCoverage:1974-
Biomedical database with coverage that encompasses more European and International content than Medline. - MEDLINE This link opens in a new windowCoverage: 1946-
A comprehensive source of life sciences and biomedical bibliographic information. A free version of MEDLINE is offered through PUBMED. - PsycINFO (Ovid) This link opens in a new windowCoverage: 1806-
Provides abstracts of literature in psychology, medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, and linguistics. Covers journals, books, reports, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations.
Subject-Based Databases
Biological and Biomedical
- BIOSIS PreviewsCovers the biological and biomedical disciplines: agriculture, biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, clinical and experimental medicine, ecology, environmental sciences, microbiology, molecular biology, pharmacology, veterinary science, virology and zoology.
Economics
Education
- ERIC This link opens in a new windowDigital library of education resources, with citations to journal articles, books, papers, reports, theses, curricula, standards and guidelines.
Health Sciences
- Cochrane Library This link opens in a new windowSystematic reviews with a focus on evidence-based health care.
- Health EvidenceAccess approximately 4000 quality-rated systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions. Compilations of published literature into public health relevant reviews.
Multidisciplinary Databases
- Academic OneFileA good general-purpose databases for scholarly journals and popular magazines.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowThe Web of Science core collection consists of five separate multidisciplinary citation indexes that can be searched independently or in combination.
But wait, there's more!
Browse all Health Sciences Databases
