Objectives | Contents | How to use this tutorial | Credits and Feedback

Welcome! This tutorial gives you an overview of key basic concepts and techniques for accessing health information using several online tools and databases.

Objectives

By the time you complete this tutorial, you should be able to:

(1) Describe strategies for choosing and using tools to find information on a disease or topic

(2) Describe features of the following tools:

• UNC-Chapel Hill Catalog

• Merck Manual Online

• Health Source (Nursing/Academic Edition)

• MEDLINEplus

• PubMed

(3) Be able to access and use the tools listed above

(4) Know where to go for help if you are having difficulty

Contents

This tutorial includes the following main sections:

Introduction (the page you're on now)

Accessing Health Information describes strategies for accessing health information and introduces concepts of boolean searching.

Using the Catalog describes basics of using the UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries catalog.

Article Databases & More explains how to access and use the UNC-Chapel Hill Article Databases & More page.

Key Health Resources describes important online health information resources: Merck, MEDLINEplus, PubMed, and Health Source Nursing/Academic Edition.

Quiz includes multiple-choice questions to test your knowledge of the material covered in this tutorial. Each time you answer a quiz question, you get immediate feedback.

Visit HSL isn't actually part of the tutorial itself. It is a supplement, mainly for newcomers to the UNC-Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library. It includes links to important information about HSL.

This tutorial provides basic concepts and instructions. For more in-depth discussion of Boolean searching, see the Boolean Searching supplement to this tutorial. For an in-depth discussion of evaluating online resources, see HSL's instructional module Evaluating Online Information.

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How To Use This Tutorial

	We will use examples from three case studies to help explain why and how you would use the key resources in health sciences research.
	To move from one section to another, click on a section name in the navigation bar that appears on the left side of every page of this tutorial. The beginning of each section includes links to the topics included in the section.
	You may find it helpful to print this tutorial. If you do, we suggest that you print the pages in landscape orientation, so that lines of text are not truncated. To switch to landscape orientation for printing in Netscape, choose File menu > Print, and in the Print dialog box click on Properties. In the Properties dialog box, for Orientation choose Landscape.
	This tutorial includes audio clips to supplement the screen presentation. Wherever you see the audio icon , click to hear an expert librarian explain a concept or technique. Note: When you click on the icon, a new window will open to play the sound clip. You can move or resize this window, or close it to go back to the tutorial page. In some cases, depending on how your computer is set up, you may be required to download the sound file before you can listen to it.
	This tutorial includes links to other Websites. Wherever this tutorial links to an external Web site, that site will open in a new browser window. To return to this tutorial, close the window of the external Web site. The window containing this tutorial should still be on your screen.

Good luck!

Credits and Feedback

This tutorial was created by Health Sciences Library Education Services staff.
Audio presentations by Monecia Samuel.
We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please send feedback to Julia Shaw-Kokot at jsk@med.unc.edu or Robert Ladd at bob_ladd@unc.edu. Thanks!

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Introduction | Accessing Health Information | Using the Online Catalog |
Article Databases & More  | Key Health Resources | Quiz

Revised August 2005. 
© 2005 Health Sciences Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill