Boxer Library
Summer is upon us, and that means that the university community is diligently working on projects before the academic year. The focus of this newsletter is going to be the new look and function of the EBSCO platform which had a refresh in the past few months. We encourage you to use these tips as you work on your projects so you can find the information and resources you need to make your projects shine. If you want customized advice on how to use this tool for your particular project, feel free to reach out to the librarians to schedule an appointment. In addition to the information about the new database platform, review this newsletter to learn about a few new items for checkout, find out a bit of info about two students who work in the library, and see some May orientation highlights. Hope everyone is having a productive summer so far!
Charlotte Beyer, MSIS, AHIP
Associate Vice President, Boxer Library
This summer, you may have noticed that some of your favorite library databases got a new look. That’s because EBSCOhost got a new interface! EBSCO is the vendor that provides access to databases such as LibrarySearch, CINAHL Complete, and PsycINFO. EBSCOhost is a platform for users to search the database to find journals, eBooks, etc. In this issue, we will be exploring some of the new and familiar features in LibrarySearch as well as some of our other popular databases on the EBSCOhost platform.
Our Most Popular EBSCO Databases
LibrarySearch is our discovery service. It allows you to search through a variety of our online resources, journals and eBooks, at once. It provides broad/general searching and is a great place to start your research.
CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature) Complete is a comprehensive database that provides access to an array of allied health articles, books, dissertations, and conference proceedings. It indexes over 3,600 journals focused on nursing, physical therapy, and other allied health professions. It also provides access to over 1,300 global open access journals.
PsycINFO is a database developed by the American Psychological Association (APA) for researching behavioral and social science topics. It contains thousands of peer-reviewed journals and articles in an easy-to-search database with over four million records total. It also includes thousands of historical records and is updated weekly.
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The new EBSCO update has changed where to find previous searches. Once you have made a few searches, if you want to combine them, you can click on “Recent Activity” in the left sidebar and check the checkboxes of each search you want to combine with Boolean operators, AND, OR or NOT. This will add your combined searches to the search bar at the top of the page. Click Search to see new results. Searches will clear once you close the window. To save a particular search or combined search, make certain you are logged into MyEBSCO (top right corner) and click the three vertical dots on the results line and select Save and Save again on the next page. This search will now be accessible by clicking “Saved” in the left sidebar.
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Setting Up An Account
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Transferring info from Previous MyEBSCO Account
If you had an account in the old MyEBSCO, you will notice a change to the new MyEBSCO. Instead of folders, we now have Projects. Items that were saved in your general folder as well as saved searches will have migrated to the new account. You will need to recreate the personalized folders, contents, and alerts in the updated MyEBSCO. To access the information from your personal folders in the old iteration of MyEBSCO, you will need to download a report.
Log in to MyEBSCO using the same username and password used in the previous iteration. Click on Projects under the Dashboard on the left-hand side. You should see the prompt “Looking for your old folders?”. Click on Get Report then click on Download Report.
An Excel file will download to your computer. Open this file. It provides separate tabs for each personalized folder as well as a tab that contains all the content (articles by folder, saved searches, saved alerts, etc.) saved in your old account. You can use this information to create Projects from any of the Folders from the old MyEBSCO. If you have a significant number of articles and/or folders that you need migrated, please reach out to eresources@rosalindfranklin.edu.
You can find full-text articles, as well as articles that you can request through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) by typing them into the “LibrarySearch” box, located on the library homepage.
Once you have clicked search, the article should appear in the search results. Titles with the most highlighted words indicate the closest match.
Below each article, you should notice a button indicating how you can access the article
The “Find it @ RFUMS” button will bring you to the journal(s) where you can access the full text article.
“Access options” will provide a direct link to the PDF full-text.
“Request item” will bring you to our Interlibrary Loan (ILL) form where you can submit an ILL request
In addition to citation searching, you can also see what articles the library has available on a general topic by doing a keyword search. LibrarySearch searches all of the databases available through the library simultaneously.
For more complex searches, you can combine multiple keywords together using Boolean Operators. Boolean operators can either refine or broaden your search, depending on which you use. You can combine multiple terms with Boolean Operators by clicking on Advanced Search.
Combining terms using ‘OR’ can broaden your search by looking up variations, synonyms, and similar terms
Combining terms using ‘AND’ can narrow your search by combining different concepts in your research question
The Boolean Operator ‘NOT’ can eliminate a term from your search. NOT, is seldom used, however it can be helpful in finding more relevant articles.
Library search and other EBSCO databases provide a few different ways to limit your results. Some common limiters you may want to check out are date range, source type, and language. You can find limiting options under “All Filters” under the search bar.
Any articles from journals we don’t subscribe to and individual chapters from textbooks we don’t own can be requested through Interlibrary Loan; just find the article in LibrarySearch and select Request Item.
You may need to login to HelixNet.
Then, just double-check that the information is correct and hit Submit Request. Requests are usually filled within 1-2 days, but book requests may take longer depending on where they are coming from.
Controlled Vocabulary is an official, organized list of terms that are assigned to articles when they are uploaded into a database. Controlled vocabulary can help you understand what the standardized term/category is for your research concepts. You can tell the database to search for specific controlled vocabulary to ensure your results are relevant to your topic. Below are instructions on how to access controlled vocabulary in CINAHL and PsycINFO.
Saving citations is the same in CINAHL and PsycINFO. Select the articles you want to save and you will be able to choose which method you would like to use to save your articles. You can download them, save them to a project, send them to yourself, or cite it.
This summer, we're taking a moment to celebrate two valuable members of our student library team, Anita Kalatoor and Elizabeth Fink, who will soon be graduating! Anita has been a Library Aide for over a year while Elizabeth became a Library Aide in January. Both Anita and Elizabeth are part of the Master of Entry into Nursing Practice (MENP) program at the College of Nursing.
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We wish Anita and Elizabeth all the best in their future endeavors and thank them for their contributions to the library!
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On May 23rd, the Boxer Library staff had the opportunity to welcome new students to the library at the Student Services Fair and orientation breakout sessions. We are excited to continue to get to know our new students over the course of their program at RFU, and we look forward to welcoming even more new students in August!
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