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
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CINAHL This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1981-presentCumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature. Professional literature of nursing, allied health, biomedicine, and healthcare.
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Embase This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1974-present
Biomedical database with coverage that encompasses more European and International content than Medline.
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MEDLINE This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1946-present
A comprehensive source of life sciences and biomedical bibliographic information. A free version of MEDLINE is offered through PUBMED.
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PsycINFO (Ovid) This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1806-present
Abstracts literature in psychology, medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, and linguistics from journals, books, reports, conferences, theses, and dissertations.
Subject-Based Databases
Biological and Biomedical
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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
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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
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Cochrane Library This link opens in a new windowSystematic reviews with a focus on evidence-based health care.
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Health EvidenceAccess approximately 4000 quality-rated systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions. Compilations of published literature into public health relevant reviews.
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Trip This link opens in a new window
A metasearch engine for evidence-based medicine. Includes guidelines.
Infectious Diseases
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GIDEON This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1348-present
Gideon is an evidence-based clinical decision support tool focused on infectious diseases, microbiology, and epidemiology. It provides diagnostic support, treatment guidance, and epidemiological tracking for over 370 infectious diseases across 230+ countries and territories. Tracked outbreaks since 1348, features 28K+ outbreaks, 39K+ graphs, 100K+ surveys and tools for 2K+ pathogens, 360+ diseases, and 30K+ drug/vaccine names. Updated daily by expert scientists.
Multidisciplinary Databases
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Academic OneFileA good general-purpose databases for scholarly journals and popular magazines.
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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
