Name:_______________________________

1. Using the library catalog to find books on the shelf and eBooks

1. From the Cabrillo College Library homepage
2. Click on Library Catalog
3. Do a Basic Search -- the opening screen. Or use Advanced.

Electronic books The library has a collection of books in electronic form "eBooks", currently numbering about 20,000. This is a tremendous resource for anytime/anywhere access to book information. The easiest way to get access to them:

1. From the Cabrillo College Library homepage <libwww.cabrillo.edu>
2. Click on Full Text Articles (second icon down on left)
3. Under General, click on NetLibrary E-Books

You can access the electronic books from off campus with your library card number.

1. From the Cabrillo Library homepage
2. Click on Full Text Articles (second icon down on left)

The primary databases available from the Cabrillo College Library for this course are grouped together:

From off campus you need to enter your library card barcode to get access to these databases.

3. Using Google

We all use Google as a first choice for an Internet search.

Google actually performs what it calls universal searches. It will search several of its databases simultaneously. From now on, you don't just have to know you're using Google, you have to know where in Google you are.

Search tools such as Google (a search engine) are powerful automated portals into much larger portions of the Internet. Each search tool provides its own collection of searching options and techniques.  

• Start at Google's main page (www.google.com)
• Type your search terms in the dialog box
• Click on the Search button
• Search tips:
  • Put multi-word phrases in quotes, e.g., "tobacco advertising" "drug abuse" etc.
  • Click on the Images link to see any pictures on your topic
  • Narrow your search by domain:
    "tobacco advertising" site:gov,
    "sexually transmitted diseases" site:cdc.gov

Besides being available via EBSCOhost, Medline is also available free online from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Medline is the world's largest database for medical science. The articles you retrieve may be quite technical in nature.

The search interface there is different, and the results list offers opportunities to get additional articles on the same topic in different ways.

1. Go to Medline at PubMed -- www.pubmed.gov
2. Click on Limits and select Links to free full text
3. Type in your search terms and click Go

The Web is an open publishing environment. Anyone can publish, and sometimes it seems as though everyone does! It is very important to evaluate what you find. In searching the Web, you want to use resources that are not only recent and relevant to your topic, but that are also based on reliable, believable information resources. A savvy Web user on medical topics will know about and use these sources:

• Health Fraud from MedlinePlus
• MedlinePlus Guide to Healthy Web Surfing
• Quackwatch

J. Bowen 1/8/07