Library Tool Box - The Basics - FYS 1399 - Trends in Healthcare

Basic Tools

Find Books
Need to find a book? Use our OneSearch Advanced search and limit "Material Type" to BOOKS.
OneSearch
This search tool will look in almost all of the Libraries' collections - books, journals, digital collections, and special collections - in one search. It returns a lot of results, but also has some powerful limiting features to focus your results. Also accessible from the Libraries' Home Page.
The Librarians
Probably your most powerful resource is the librarian who is assigned to work specifically with the folks in your major or with the field you are writing your paper on. All of us are willing to meet one-on-one with you to help you find a good topic and the resources to successfully complete that assignment or paper. That's our job.

Effective Searching

You can search the various scholarly article databases I'm pointing you to most effectively if you do the following:

1. Narrow your topic down from the one Dr. Neilson has given you. For example, you might focus on a specific population, say, veterans.

2. Think about two specific questions you want to address in your four page paper:

a) What sacrifices have veterans made in X conflict that entitles them to specific care?

b) Do we owe veterans care in proportion to either their length of service or to the severity of their injury or do we owe them comprehensive health care?

3. Pick out the key words from these questions and search those together:

veterans and Gulf War and health care

veterans and agent orange and severity

The results you come to will be more focused and keep you more on target to make a solid argument than the broader class topic. You'll spend less time selecting good articles and more time reading and engaging in the scholarly discussion the articles are part of.

Basic Services

Scholarly journals? What's that?
One of the differences in college-level research is that you'll need to find "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" journal articles. This guide will help you understand what is meant by those terms so you don't turn in the wrong type of article for the task at hand.
If we don't own something you need for a paper . . .
Libraries have a system, called interlibrary loan, to borrow items we don't have from other libraries. It's a free service, but does take some time. This page from our intro to library tutorial give a more complete explanation.

Do we have this book/article/DVD here?

You'll use BearCat to find out if we own a book or a specific journal/magazine and our databases (guides to the articles published in journals, magazines and newspapers) to identify useful sources for assignments and papers. Where do you go from there? The items below link to explanations about how to locate items in the Libraries and how to get what we may not have.

Reading Library of Congress Call Numbers
This chart from the University of North Carolina Libraries is a quick explanation of how to use this finding system to find a specific book on the shelf.
To find where in the BU Libraries a specific call number is located just click on the LOCATION (Moody General; Jones Reference, Texas, etc.) and you'll be taken to a map showing you where the book is in the building or where the building is on campus.
How do I know if you have an article I want?
You're in a database and the article you want isn't listed there. We have many databases and each of them has different content so don't give up. This link explains how to use the BU InfoLinks button to find out if the article is in another one of our databases.

FYS 1399 - Trends in Healthcare: Library Tool Box - The Basics

Basic Tools

Effective Searching

Basic Services

Do we have this book/article/DVD here?

University Libraries