Searching Library Resources
4/19/17
This guide contains instructions more detailed than those in the Library Users Guide on searching for material in both the library catalog (books, and material physically present in the library) and material electronically available through the databases to which the College subscribes. No set of instructions can contain all the possible variations and problems you might incur while seeking information, but it will get you a long way towards your goal. If you become stymied in your search, the first rule, as always is: Ask the librarian for help!!
Table of Contents
Searching the Library Catalog…………………………..this page
Available Databases, General Discussion…………….page 5
Searching Details: Current Contents…………………..page 8
Searching the Journal of Chinese Medicine……………page 10
Journals Available Through the Databases…………..page 12
Advanced Searching by Topic…………………………….page 15
Boolean Searching…………………………………………..page 16
Increasing Precision (Medline and AltHealthWatch)…page 18
PubMed…………………………………………………………page 20
PubMed Central………………………………………………page 23
Natural Medicines Database……………………………….page 25
The Library Catalog
Once you get to the library catalog, there are a few things you have to know. First off, chose the library you are in before you start searching. While there is a fair amount of duplication between Boulder and Santa Fe it is not 100%, and since we don’t ship things back and forth, make sure you chose your own library.
The other thing is to chose what you want to search. “All Fields” will get you an enormous number of returns.
Look at the drop box to see your options. Generally speaking searching the title field is the best place to start.
In this case we plugged in the title of a required text. Students have been busy and all the copies have been checked out.
Searching the title field got a very specific response- the one book with that exact title. What if you use the same words, but search All Fields?:
Which gets you 1742 hits which is darn near the whole collection, so you have some scrolling to do. Generally speaking the really pertinent books will be in the first 20 or so returns, so a lot of scrolling wouldn’t be necessary.
Or, try by author. Any acupuncturist should know Peter Deadman.
4 hits total. He hasn’t written a lot, but it is all important stuff.
On the other hand, Bob Flaws will get 76 hits.
Among the Flaws hits was this:
WB 70.8.P7 F591pp 1993 is both the shelf location number, and tells you some things about the book:
WB: Practice of Medicine
70.8.P7: Women’s health in the TCM/OM tradition (70.9), specifically pregnancy (.p7). Which means you might well find other books on the same topic at WB 70.8.P7.
F591f: Bob Flaws last name. Complicated system, but basically puts books of the same topic in alphabetical sequence by author. The pp at the end is because there are so many books by Flaws that we add a little alphabetic code based on the book’s title.
1993- the date of original publication of this version of the book. Often books get reprinted several times over a number of years, but the date reflects the date of the content, not the date of printing. If a revised edition is published, then the date of the new edition is used in the call number. It’s the date of the information that counts, not the date the book was printed.
When you get to the book you want, you have a lot of information available:
There are 6 copies of the book in Boulder- of which only 2 are available to check out. Reference and Clinic books are available to look at, but do not circulate. Books that are lost are, well, not there any more.
Santa Fe has 5 copies of the book, one of which is in Reference, one is on the shelf and available to be checked out, and 3 are overdue, meaning Populi is sending notices to the students that have them.
Also notice the Place a Hold button. This is explained in the Library User’s Guide.
The Populi library catalog is not particularly sophisticated from a searching point of view. On the other hand, the book collections are not that large to begin with, and if you learn just a bit about the call number system often you can simply go to the shelf and poke around a bit. Serendipity may well strike.
Searching the available databases, is considerably more complex, however.
Database Searching.
Available databases, general discussion
Before we get to the specifics of searching, a look at four of the big databases to which students and faculty have access seems appropriate. Aside from these four there are two others, the Journal of Chinese Medicine, and the Natural Medicines database that are different enough that they will require separate discussions.
Here are the big four:
Databases to which students have access either via Ebscohost (password required) or open access
Medline: MEDLINE with Full Textprovides the authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and pre-clinical sciences found onMEDLINE, plus the database provides full text for more than 1,470 journals indexed inMEDLINE. Of those, nearly 1,450 have cover-to-cover indexing inMEDLINE. And of those, 558 are not found with full text in any version ofAcademic Search,Health Source orBiomedical Reference Collection.Medline coverage goes back to the 19th century. It is far and away the largest database available to SWAC students. Not everything, however, is available full text.
AltHealthWatch: This database focuses on the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. It offers libraries full text articles for more than 180 international, and often peer-reviewed journals and reports. In addition, there are hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts.Alt HealthWatchprovides in-depth coverage across the full spectrum of subject areas covered by complementary and alternative medicine. This database features indexing and abstracts going back as far as 1984, and full text going back as far as 1990. AltHealthWatch is a considerably smaller database than Medline, but is more focused on alternative medicine.
PubMed: PubMed provides free access to the Medline database, although the search engine is considerably less sophisticated then that of Medline. It is also unclear whether the entire Medline database is available through PubMed.
PubMed Central: PMC is essentially a full text sub-set of PubMed. That is, anything you find on PMC will be available full text, and for free. While this is an advantage in one sense, it also prevents access to the often extremely detailed abstracts found in all the other databases mentioned here.
Results of searching for information in all four databases:
Searching AuricularAcupuncture
PubMed
Searching abstracts
Auricular AND acupuncture=434 hits
10 of the first 20 had access to free full text.
PubMed Central
Searching abstracts
Auricular AND acupuncture= 58 hits
All full text
AlthealthWatch
Searching abstracts, specifying full text, and peer reviewed journals- ie: real research, not just news, notes, or opinions.
Auricular AND acupuncture=82 hits
Medline
Searching abstracts, specifying full text
Auricular AND acupuncture=75 hits
On the face of it, AltHealthWatch comes out clearly on top. I will redo the search, specifying peer reviewed articles only and see how that works out.
Searching Herbal matters
Medline
Searching abstracts, specifying full text
Gui ban= 0 hits
Searching all text, specifying full text
Gui ban = 3 hits
Searching abstract, full text
Plastrum Testudinis=2 hits
Searching all text
Plastrum Testudinis= 14 hits
AltHealthWatch
Searching abstracts, specifying full text
Gui ban= 0 hits
Searching all text, full text, peer reviewed journals
“Gui ban”=15 hits
Searching abstracts, full text
Plastrum Testudinis= 0 hits
Searching all text, full text, peer reviewed journals
“Plastrum Testudinis”=9 hits
PubMed
Searching abstracts
Gui ban = 4 hits, one of which had free full text
Searching all text
Gui ban = 16 hits, five of which had free full text
Searching abstract
Plastrum Testudinis = 11 hits, one of which had free full text
Searching all text
Plastrum Testudinis= same 11 hits.
PubMed Central
Searching abstracts
Gui ban= 0 hits
Searching all text
“Gui ban” = 6 hits
Searching abstracts
Plastrum Testudinis = 0 hits
Searching all fields
Plastrum Testudinis=12 hits
This clearly suggests that searching on Latin names is going to be more productive than searching the Chinese version. On the other hand the Chinese version might be more specifically TCM/OM. Scanning article titles will probably give the student an idea of what they are looking at.
Searching Details
There are any number of ways of approaching this topic. We’ll start with a relatively easy topic, direct access to specific TCM/OM journals
Current Contents: Or, Keeping up with TCM/OM Journals.
You may always look up specific topics in the various databases to which we have access (Medline, AltHealthWatch, PubMed, PubMed Central) but you might also want to track articles available in a specific journal. More and more TCM/OM journals have their own web presence, with varying degrees of coverage, sophistication of searching, and availability of full text. Those are covered in the next section. If you know of others please let know, so they may be included in future versions of this guide.
After those journals with direct access, we’ll cover finding specific journals through the databases mentioned above.
TCM/OM Journals with direct access
Acupuncture in medicine: journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society
See Current Issue, and Archive near the top of the page for access.
Chinese acupuncture & moxibustion
English language abstracts free. Full text either in Chinese, or cost money, or both.
World journal of acupuncture-moxibustion
English language abstracts free. Full text either in Chinese, or cost money, or both.
Journal of acupuncture and meridian studies
Current Issue. For past issues, upper left, Articles and Issues-List of Issues-Year and issue. Currently only material since 2010 is online.
Acupuncture Today
More newsy/notesy than a research journal. Page through using the arrows at the bottom of the page.
Journal of pharmacopuncture
Look for Articles & Issue for archive- top of page. Current issue loads first. The page, in general, takes a while to load, so patience is required. Archive goes back to the beginning, 1997, with full text access.
Journal Of Traditional Chinese Medicine
The current issue, full text, pops right up. Search options, including by issue, or keyword, on the right hand column. You may have to scroll down a bit.
Chinese Medicine[Electronic Resource]
All of the above require neither subscriptions, nor passwords, and can be accessed from anywhere. Which is something to keep in mind once you are out in practice.
And, the granddaddy of them all, The Journal of Chinese Medicine.
The hitch here is thatJCM is subscription based, and you have to access itfrom a SWAC computer. Otherwise, no full text access.
Searching the Journal of Chinese Medicine
The Journal of Chinese Medicineis the leading journal in the field of TCM/OM. It has been published since 1978, and SWAC has access to everything they have ever published, and much more. JCM is linked from the library catalog page (right hand side, fifth link down).
Unlike other databases (Medline, AltHealthWatch) to which SWAC subscribes, you cannot search the JCM from home. JCM keeps track of subscribers by IP address, so you have to use a computer in a SWAC library.
The search function is not immediately obvious when you go to the JCM web page. Click on “The Journal” and look at the drop box:
You can select either JCM article archive, or research archive, We’ll take them in order:
Unlike other databases the article archive does not have keyword searching, Boolean operators, or other search limitation conditions you may be used to using. Basically you can use the already established categories listed on the right hand side of the page.
And seven more categories.
Clicking on Auriculotherapy, we get a list of 49 articles. Some are available full text for free. For others you need to spend money to get full text, but for those you can get the abstract. The difference is what journal the article was published in originally. If in the JCM, you can download a PDF for free. If from anything else, click on the
to get the abstract.
The research archive works in much the same way. On the right hand side of the screen, see
At this point, things get trickier. Some things will be immediately available, others require a few more steps. Clicking on the headline “Number of needles used may not matter for pain relief” brought up an abstract of an article, the title of which was at the bottom of the abstract:“3,5,11 needles: looking for the perfect number of needles--a randomized and controlled study” along with a citation to the original journal (Acupunct Electrother Res, etc) Clicking on that, brings up an entry in PubMed with another abstract, but no signs of full text availability. It does, however say, “indexed for MEDLINE.”
MEDLINE is one of the databases to which we subscribe. MEDLINE can be searched from home, but you need the login and password information visible on the yellow poster in the library. If you shift over to MEDLINE, via EbscoHost ( and plug the title into the search box, you come up with a full text, downloadable, PDF version of the article in question.
Not everything in the research archive is going to turn out to be available, but at the very least you should be able to get an abstract.
As always, if it gets confusing, or you are not sure what to do next, ask the librarian!
Journals Available Through the Databases:
TCM/OM journals in the ALTHealthWatch (AHW) and Medline (ML) databases with full text availability. Remember user ID and password required. Such are posted in the computer area of both libraries. Kindly do not spread them around, as we have a contractual obligation with Ebsco to protect them.
These examples will work in either AltHealthWatch or Medline. In order to get to a specific journal, pick your database, then go to Advanced Search (always a good idea anyway.) Then select Publications:
Which gets you this:
Plug the title of the journal you want to inspect into the search box:
Which will bring up the journal in question. The key part is over on the right hand side of the screen where it lists all the issues you can access:
In the Fall, 2014 issue of American Acupuncturist you will find this, full text, and you are on your way!
And the journals, and the database (AHW, ML) through which you can access them.
Acupuncture In Medicine (AHW, ML)
Bibliographic Records:05/01/1990 To 04/04/2016
PDF Full Text;HTML Full Text.
Acupuncture & Electro-Therapeutics Research (AHW, ML)
Bibliographic Records:03/01/1995 To Present
Full Text:03/01/1995 To Present
PDF Full Text;HTML Full Text
Zhen Ci Yan Jiu, AKA Acupuncture Research (ML)
Bibliographic Records:MEDLINE v10n1, 1985-v21n4, 1996; v32n1, 2007- Abstracts in English, full text Chinese.
American Acupuncturist (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:07/01/1994 To Present
Full Text:07/01/1994 To Present
PDF Full Text;HTML Full Text
American Journal Of Chinese Medicine (AHW, ML)
Bibliographic Records:01/01/2002 To Present
Full Text:01/01/2002 To Present (With A 12 Month Delay)
*Full Text Delay Due To Publisher Restrictions("Embargo")
PDF Full Text
Australian Journal Of Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:11/01/2010 To Present
Full Text:11/01/2010 To Present
PDF Full Text
California Journal Of Oriental Medicine (CJOM) (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:05/01/1996 To Present
Full Text:05/01/1996 To Present
PDF Full Text;HTML Full Text
European Journal Of Oriental Medicine (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:03/01/1993 To 06/01/2000
Full Text:03/01/1993 To 06/01/2000
PDF Full Text;HTML Full Text
Guidepoints: Acupuncture In Recovery (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:10/01/1993 To Present
Full Text:10/01/1993 To Present
PDF Full Text;HTML Full Text
Journal of Acupuncture and Meridian studies (ML)
Bibliographic Records:MEDLINE (Full) V1n1, Sept. 2008 - Current
Journal Of Traditional Acupuncture (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:04/01/1990 To 07/01/1993
Full Text:04/01/1990 To 07/01/1993
HTML Full Text The journal is defunct
Medical acupuncture (ML)
Bibliographic Records:PubMed Selected Citations Only -
New England Journal Of Traditional Chinese Medicine (AHW)
Bibliographic Records:03/01/2004 To 09/01/2005
Full Text:03/01/2004 To 09/01/2005
PDF Full Text