- Miami University Libraries
- Subject & Course Guides
- NSG 642
- Finding Articles
NSG 642: Finding Articles
Important Note
Please be sure to review the information on the Before You Search! tab on the left menu before you begin searching in the tools listed on this tab. The Before You Search! tab explains what a "peer reviewed" article is and how to tell when you have found one. It also gives tips for building more effective searches. There are brief videos and tutorials that explain how to choose the best keywords, refine your searches, and evaluate the information you find.
CINAHL, MEDLINE, and Health Source
You’ll need to enter your Miami Unique ID and password to access these resources from off-campus.
Choose one of these resources:
CINAHL
MEDLINE
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
At the top of the search page, there is a link that says “Choose Databases.” Click that link to add in other databases related to your topic. This allows you to search multiple databases at one time and have results from all of them show up in one results list. Add in the other 2 resources listed above by checking the box next to the name of the resource in the pop-up window.
Then enter your search terms. You can also search the resources listed above individually, if you would like. Scroll down the page to see additional search options before you click search.
Check the box next to “Peer Reviewed” to get results from only peer-reviewed journals in your results list. You can limit the results list to articles published within a specific date range either from the search screen.
After you click on a blue article title in your results list, you will be taken to a new page with more detailed information about that specific article. This includes an abstract, or summary, of the article. Reading the abstract is a quick way to determine whether the article answers your research question or not. If it does, you should look in the top left corner of the screen for a link that says "Full Text."
Clicking that link will give you the full contents of the article rather than only the summary available on the current page. When there is no "Full Text" link in that corner, use the yellow "Find It!" button to search for the full text in other databases. See more about Find It! in the box to the right in this guide.
The vertical toolbar on the right side of the page gives you options for what to do with the article. There are icons to:
- Save the article to your Google Drive. If there is a PDF of the article, that is what is saved. If there was no PDF available, it saves a copy of the info on the detailed article screen (title, author, journal name, and a link back to the page, etc.).
- Print the article. This costs $.10/page at all Miami University printers. Additional information about printing at Miami University is available on this page.
- Email the article to yourself. If there is a PDF available, it will be included in the email if you select that option. If there isn't, you will receive a citation to the article (title, author, name of the journal, etc.).
- Get a citation for the article in various formats. Scroll to the format you are using (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). Highlight, copy, and paste the article citation from this page into your paper. Some of the required formatting does not copy over correctly (hanging indent, sometimes italics, sometimes portions appear in all caps when they should not, etc.). You will need to manually correct these mistakes, so be sure to compare your pasted citations to some of the sample citations I linked to on the Citing Sources tab of this guide.
Use the Find It! Button
Some databases include the full text of the articles described in the them. However, most databases do not. When the database does not have the full text of an article, you should see a yellow Find It button like the one above.
Clicking this button will search through other databases that Miami subscribes to looking for the full text. If a different database has it, you will see a link to it on the new tab that opens.
If there is no full text link on the new tab, you should see a link to a form for a service called interlibrary loan (ILL). If you fill out this form, the library will try to find the article from another library on your behalf. This can take several days, however, so if you need the article right away, it is not a good option for you.