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Program in Interdisciplinary Health

Laurentian's graduate program in Interdisciplinary Health integrates knowledge from various health fields including Kinesiology, Psychology, Sociology, and related disciplines to provide a broad understanding of health and human development over the life course.  Originally a Master's in Human Development, the program was renamed in September 2014.  For more information on the program,  please visit its website.

Connect from Off Campus

Most of the Library's online resources are available to you from anywhere off campus.  See: LU Proxy Accounts.

Library Instruction

To learn more about the library and its resources and how you can exploit them to your advantage, register in the Research Skills Tutorial on D2L. There are several sections in the tutorial with a short quiz at the end of each; at the end you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Many professors require you to take this tutorial--and once you finish it, you can save your certificate to reprint as often as necessary.

We can hold special classes at the request of at least 5 students. If you would like to arrange a special class, or you think your course would benefit from some in-class library instruction, please ask your professor to contact the librarian responsible for your faculty to set up some sessions.

More Help

In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.

By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.

Research consultations: Book a research consultation with the librarian responsible for your faculty by Zoom or phone.

By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.

For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca

Get Books and Theses

Searching the Catalogue

The catalogue is your primary tool for finding books in the J.N. Desmarais Library. You can also use the catalogue to find other materials, including government publications and journals (including individual articles).

You can search the catalogue by:

  • Title
  • Author/Creator
  • Subject
  • Call Number

When you know the book you are searching for, pick Title or Author; when you are searching for a topic, start with Keyword unless you know the exact Subject heading describing your topic.

More on searching the Catalogue is available in Module 5 of the Research Skills Tutorial in D2L.

E-Books

E-books are located in two different places:
  • Some may be located by using the library’s catalogue and selecting "Books & eBooks" as the "Material Type" and then further filtering your results by "Available online". 
  • E-books can also be located by searching in e-book collections. Searching in these collections is the same as searching in a database.

Recommended E-Book Collections

  • Books at Ovid ?

    Description: over 450 ebooks in the health sciences

  • Ebook Central ?

    Description: close to 40,000 ebooks in multiple subject areas

  • EBSCOHost eBook Collection ?

    Description: Over 7,500 ebooks in multiple subject areas

  • PsycBOOKS ?

    Description: Over 2,800 ebooks in psychology.

  • Springer LINK ?

    Description: SpringerLink currently offers 2,777 fully peer-reviewed journals and over 151,000 books online.

WorldCat

With nearly 200 million records representing titles held by nearly 75,000 libraries you will find almost any book ever published in the English language in WorldCat.
 
 

Theses

In addition to books, you may wish to search for book-length Master's theses or Ph.D dissertations.

Best bet:  Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest).

If you are also looking for recent theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our Research Repository - LUZONE.  Note that since 2013, before graduation all Masters and Doctoral candidates MUST deposit their theses or dissertations in this repository.

Get Articles

Articles: Quick Tips

The databases to the right provide references to many scholarly journal articles and papers.

  1. Start off with keyword searches expressing your topic. Keyword searching crosses all fields.
  2. Use Search Operators such as "OR" and "AND" to expand or reduce your results.
  3. Review those items that look relevant, then, exploit the details within those entries to help lead you to other relevant articles.
    • Pay attention to the subject headings (often called "descriptors") to see how the database describes your topic and use them to find related articles.
    • Find other papers written by the same author; these will typically be on similar subjects.
    • Follow citation trails: other articles that have cited this article will probably be on a related subject and will include citations to other articles of interest.
  4. For more Secrets of Searching a Database, review that section in How to Research Like a Librarian.

Peer Review

Peer Review is the evaluation of creative work by scholars in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of the work in that field.

In the case of peer reviewed journals, which are usually academic, peer review generally refers to the evaluation of the articles in them prior to publication. For more, check out this definition of peer review.

  • To ascertain whether a journal is peer reviewed, consult Ulrichsweb.

Nota Bene

Note: Library databases marked with a  (which describes the database) open in the same window as this guide. Upon completion of a search in such a database, to return to the guide, you must click the back arrrow on your browser; alternatively, most browsers give you the option of opening these databases in a new tab or a new window.

Recommended Starting Databases

  • PubMed ?

    Description: PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

  • CINAHL ?

    Description: CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) provides indexing for more than 2,980 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. The database contains more than 2,000,000 records dating back to 1981.

  • ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Premium ?

    Description: Health care information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine. Includes over 890 full-text journals, 12,300 full-text dissertations, and over 2,000 Videos.

  • PsycINFO ?

    Description: PsycINFO is an electronic bibliographic database providing abstracts and citations to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. Updated weekly, PsycINFO provides access to journal articles, books, chapters, and dissertations.

  • SPORTDiscus ?

    Description: Covers all subjects related to sports, including kinesiology, sport administration, sport psychology, education, coaching, nutrition, public heath, rehabilitation, and therapy. Access is limited to 4 concurrent users.

  • UpToDate ?

    You must register an UpToDate account using your @laurentian email to search the database.

    Description: "UpToDate® is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource which clinicians trust to make the right point-of-care decisions. More than 5,700 world-renowned physician authors, editors and peer reviewers use a rigorous editorial process to synthesize the most recent medical information into trusted, evidence-based recommendations that are proven to improve patient care and quality."

Some Related Databases

  • AgeLine ?

    Description: AgeLine focuses exclusively on the population aged 50+ and issues of aging. AgeLine is the premier source for the literature of social gerontology and includes aging-related content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy. AgeLine indexes over 200 journals, books, book chapters, and reports. Publication coverage is from 1978 to the present, with selected coverage from 1966-1977

  • Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America ?

    Description: A bibliographic database covering all aspects of Indigenous peoples in North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BIPNA contains more than 141,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present.

  • EBSCOhost Platform Databases ?

    Description: Multidisciplinary platform containing many databases in different disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, education, arts and natural sciences.

  • ProQuest Platform Databases ?

    Description: Multidisciplinary platform containing many databases in multiple disciplines, such as the humanities, social sciences, education, arts and natural sciences.

  • MEDLINE (Ovid) ?

    Description: The latest bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 5,200 biomedicine and life sciences journals in nearly 40 languages. Every citation is indexed using the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) controlled vocabulary. MEDLINE is the largest subset of citations in the PubMed database. Searching MEDLINE via Ovid offers better support for complex literature reviews with the adjacency (ADJn) operator to find terms within "n" words of each other.

  • PubMed ?

    Description: PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

  • Scholars Portal - Ejournals ?

    Description: Scholars Portal is a digital repository of over 20 million scholarly articles drawn from journals covering every academic discipline.

Best Internet Portal

Citation Sources

When researching a paper, it is useful to consult the citations used by the author of an article that you find relevant.  But that article itself may have been cited by other authors after it was first written. Two sources help you identify such citations:

Get Evidence Informed Sources

Definition

The Canadian Nurses Association believes: "Evidence-informed  decision-making  is a continuous  interactive process involving the explicit, conscientious and judicious consideration of the best available evidence to provide care."  However, the Association concludes: "It is imperative  to acknowledge that no level of evidence eliminates the need for professional clinical judgment or for the consideration of client preferences.

Advantages

According to the CNA,  "Patients depend on [health professionals]  to do the best on their behalf. As part of their professional accountability, [health professionals] must continually examine the best way to deliver care...When delivered in a context of caring and an organizational culture that promotes best practices, EBP is associated with higher quality care and better patient outcomes than care that is steeped in tradition."   Further "EBP also reduces practice variations, promoting greater consistency of care and contributing greatly to quality and patient safety agendas... EBP leads to improved health care provider satisfaction... including increased... autonomy...Work stress is reduced for[hea;th professinmals] when evidence-based guidelines are enacted.... At a system level, “health-care services based on the best currently available evidence have been shown to decrease costs” and improve cost-effectiveness."

Types of Evidence

A variety of sources are being used by health professionals to facilitate their use of evidence. These sources include systematic reviews, research studies and abstraction journals that summarize valid, clinically useful published studies, and clinical practice guidelines. Guidelines are based on the most rigorous research available, and when research is not available, they are grounded in expert opinion and consensus." 

The 6S Pyramid: Resources for Evidence-Based Practice

Six S Pyramid

The 6S pyramid is arranged in a hierarchy, with the different levels outlined and colour-coded to the right of this page

To begin your search for relevant evidence, use the concepts identified in your focussed question , remembering:

  • A piece of evidence's ability to guide clinical action increases as you move up the pyramid.

  • The breadth of knowledge is largest at the base of the triangle.

N.B.  This and the following panel of this Guide has been adapted from one developed at McMaster University.  It has been modified for local use.

Three Key References

Here are three articles, the first which will puts the 6S system in context and the second two which explain how it can be searched:

DiCenso, A., Bayley, L., & Haynes, R. B. (2009). Accessing pre-appraised evidence: fine-tuning the 5S model into a 6S model. Evidence based nursing, 12(4), 99-101.

Robeson, P., Dobbins, M., DeCorby, K., & Tirilis, D. (2010). Facilitating access to pre-processed research evidence in public health. BMC public health, 10(1), 95.

Windish, D. (2013). Searching for the right evidence: how to answer your clinical questions using the 6S hierarchy. Evidence Based Medicine, 18(3), 93-97.

The 6S Pyramid in Action

SYSTEMS

Integrating information from the lower levels of the hierarchy with individual patient records, systems represent the ideal source of evidence for clinical decision-making. 

SUMMARIES

Summaries are regularly updated clinical guidelines or textbooks that integrate evidence-based information about specific clinical problems.

Clinical Practice Guidelines

General

Evidence-Based Texts

SYNOPSES OF SYNTHESES

Synopses of syntheses, summarize the information found in systematic reviews.  By drawing conclusions from evidence at lower levels of the pyramid, these synopses often provide sufficient information to support clinical action.

SYNTHESES

Commonly referred to as a systematic review, a synthesis is a comprehensive summary of all the evidence surrounding a specific research question.    

SYNOPSES OF SINGLE STUDIES

Synopses of single studies summarize evidence from high-quality studies.   The following evidence-based abstract journals are the best place to find this type of information:

Studies represent unique research conducted to answer specific clincial questions.

Article Databases

The CINAHL, OVID (Medline, PsycINFO), and Pubmed databases can be searched using the Clinical Queries filter, limiting your results to specific clinical research areas: Therapy, Prognosis, Review, Qualitative, and Causation (Etiology)

For further information and tips on using the Clinical Queries filter, please visit the following links:

META_SEARCHES

Meta-Searches search for evidence across multiple resources.  These tools return information from all levels of the pyramid:

  • ACCESSSSS ("One-stop" access to pre-appraised evidence to address this key question: what is the current best evidence available to support clinical decisions?)
  • TRIP Database (Turning Research Into Practice)

Get Films

Film Collections

  • NFB (National Film Board) ?

    Description: The NFB's online Screening Room features over 3,000 films, excerpts, trailers and interactive works (including) documentaries, animation, experimental films and fiction (with a Canadian context or perspective.)

Need a Film not Available in Laurentian's Online Film Collections?

​Consult: Watmedia (Provincial Multi-media Catalogue).  Material held by Laurentian may be signed out in the library. To order a film not available at Laurentian, please email LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date(s) you require the item.

Questions:  Please contact Ashley Thomson who manages the Intrafilm Project.