Choosing a Topic

• Make a list of possible topics - use class discussions, texts, conversations with friends, and discussions with your instructor for ideas.
• Try to focus on something that matters to you. You'll do a better job with a topic that has some personal meaning, and it will make it much more interesting.
• Browse the shelves where books on the topic are kept (RC1200-1245: sports medicine. RD701-811: orthopedic surgery. RD792-811: physical rehabilitation.)
• Browse MEDLINEplus - Sports Injuries
• Search a database or index of articles on your topic area.
• Transform your topic into questions. (most effective treatment, most common injury, etc.)

Reference works are helpful at two points in your research: when starting out (by offering overview articles of, say, a medical condition or a technique) or when nailing down unfamiliar terms, concepts, and topics that turn up during your research. Reference book articles are typically written by experts and often offer not only information but excellent bibliographies for further research.

Overview

• Encyclopedia of sports medicine. (Ref. RC1206 .O355 2005)

• Mosby's medical, nursing, and allied health dictionary. (REF. R121 .M89 2002)
• Oxford dictionary of sports science and medicine. (REF. RC1206 .O94 1994)

• Conn's current therapy (Ref RM 101 .C87 2004)
• The Gale encyclopedia of medicine. (REF. RC41 .G35 2002)
• Magill's medical guide (REF RC 41 .M34 2005)
• Mosby's pharmacology in nursing. (REF. RM301 .H33 1998)
• PDR nurse's handbook. (REF. RM125 .P47)
• Physicians' desk reference : PDR. (REF. RS75 .P5)

• Multicultural clients : a professional handbook for health care providers and social workers. (REF. RA418.5.T73 L37 1995)
• Pocket guide to cultural assessment. (REF. RT86.54 .G45 1998)

• The American Dietetic Association's complete food & nutrition guide. (REF. RA784 .D89 1998)
• Encyclopedia of human nutrition (REF QP 141 .E526 2005)

Databases for articles and other materials offer references to publications that may or may not be in this library; some databases offer full text of articles and others simply references. There are in-depth databases that cover publications in a particular field and others that are interdisciplinary. Databases can be accessed from a drop-down list on the library's main page; descriptions can be found here.

CINAHL
The Cumulated Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, CINAHL, provides access to nursing and allied health literature and information from 1982 to the present.

Physical Education Index
covers scholarly journals, report literature, conference proceedings, trade magazines, patents, and articles from the popular press in the field of physical education since 1970.*

PubMed (Medline)
A free database of medical journal abstracts provided by the National Library of Medicine. Very few of the millions of articles listed here are in full text. Most are primary literature, but some reviews and clinical case studies and the like are included as well.*

PsycINFO
Offers articles in psychology including some neuroscience articles, but many that take a more traditional clinical psychology research; you will have to choose articles from here with care to avoid research that takes a less physiological approach.

PubMed Central
Access to full-text journals in the life sciences, provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

SPORT Discus
The SPORTDiscus database contains bibliographic references to the practical and research literature from around the world for sport, physical fitness, active living, and physical education subjects.

NOTE: You can search several databases that share a common interface by choosing them from this list. There is a version of PubMed Central here that is slightly less complete than the free version - it doesn't go back as far and doesn't include the most recently-entered articles. But it does offer a more user-friendly search engine and an opportunity to search it with other databases

Scholarly vs. Trade. vs. Popular

See this site for information on distinguishing between scholarly journals, trade magazines, or popular magazines.

Journal Locator

Click here to search for the journals and magazines that Gustavus subscribes to (both in print and electronically).

If the journal is not available in full text online or in print at Gustavus, you may request copies of articles through Interlibrary Loan. Use the online forms to make ILL requests or simply printout citations from SPORT Discus, Physical Education Index, PubMed, or CINAHL. Put those printouts in the wooden box on the counter at the ILL office (next door to this computer lab).

See the APS List of References for examples for citing journal articles, articles published on the web, multiple authors, etc.

Using RefWorks to compile and format your citations

You might notice that in the CSA databases there's an option to export your references to RefWorks. This is a citation management program you can use to store and reformat references. For example, you can select references in Physical Education Index, send them to your RefWorks account, and then later have them printed out in the format used by the journal Ecology. These references will be stored as long as you like.

First, you need to set up a personal account from a computer on the campus network.
Later, log in and use the system to sort out your references, import or add references, add notes if you want, and then export in whatever citation format you prefer.

• To send references to your RefWorks account from a CSA database, mark the references you want to save, then click on "save to RefWorks."
• To send references from Web of Science, mark those you want to save, then click on "marked list" then "export to reference software." Save that file, then open Refworks, click on "import," browse to find the file you saved and click "import" at the bottom of the screen.

To print out references -

• click on "bibliography" and choose Journal of Neurophysiology as your citation style.
• pick a folder of references to format. (You can't pick one article at a time here, but you can put articles in "my list" and use that to make a bibliography.)
• choose whether to create a text, html, or Word document, then cut and paste into your paper.
• "write 'n cite" is a plug-in program for use with Word - not necessary, but an option.
• NOTE: When you import from different databases, you'll need to do some editing. Web of Science, for example, gives titles of journals in all caps. You need to edit your final works cited list to make sure the entries are all complete and consistent.