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HSC 4950 Special Topics in Health Care

Databases for Health and Culture Information

Google Scholar is a great place to start because it is such a large multidisciplinary resource (and this helps when the topic is cross disciplinary like this one).   MEDLINE and the other databases listed below should also have information on the topic.  

Recommended Databases:

Some general search tips:

  • Doing multiple more specific searches rather than one general one, for example Iran and Illness belief, or Iran and gender roles, rather than the more generic “Iran and culture,” will return more useful results.
  • Be sure to search for both the country (e.g. Philippines) and the ethnicity (e.g. Filipino)
  • Watch for terms that you can use in future searches, for example a search on folk remedies, may lead to folk healer names that may help in future searches, for example albularyo or manghihilot (among others) for the Philippines.
  • Finally, I actually recommend the use of general web sources (found by googling) to get background information (I did this to find some folk healer names for the point above).  But once I have the information, I would fact check and trade up to more scholarly resources (books and peer review journal articles) for what actually goes in my paper.

Some search tips for searching Google Scholar:

  • If you are searching from off-campus use the link below or change the Google Scholar settings (by clicking on the three horizontal lines in the upper left of the screen) and add SPU as a 'Library Link' so you can see free and SPU full text links on the right of the screen.
  • You can specify that a certain word be in the title of the article, for example intitle:Filipino (see a search using this), then you can see how your concept relates to the article while skimming results.

All SPU Databases

The above is only a select list of SPU databases I think will be most helpful for this assignment.  There could be other helpful databases for your topic.

Not sure which database is best for your topic?  Ask a Librarian!

A-Z List of SPU Databases

 

Finding Books

You may also want to search for books on your topic.  That can be done from the main search box on the library homepage, or here.

Some tips for searching books:

  • When searching books, sometimes you do need to be more general so "Iraq and culture" may be a better search than "health beliefs Iraq," or a book on Transcultural Healthcare may have a chapter on the Philippines.
  • Plan ahead for finding books, SPU may not have the item you need, but you will be able to request it through Summit Borrowing (3-5 business days for delivery).