Using MEDLINE

To start, go to The University of Akron Libraries home page and click on Articles & Research Databases.

We will see this screen, where the databases are arranged in categories such as Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, General Interest, etc. To find MEDLINE click on Health Sciences/Medicine.

The Health Sciences/Medicine Databases are arranged alphabetically. Scroll down to the M section or simply click the M at the top of the screen. Click on the link to MEDLINE 2001 – Present. We could also use OLDMEDLINE or MEDLINE 1966 – Present.

Here we have the search form for MEDLINE 2001 – Present. All OSearch databases have a similar search form or interface. We have the option to search with a single search box (A) or we can add More search boxes (B) to combine terms using the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT. We can search for our terms in All Fields, Author Names, Article/Book Titles, Journal Titles, Subject Headings, Abstract, or PubMed ID (C). Also, we can apply limits to our search such as Language and Year (D). An important feature is the Search words in thesaurus check box (E). A thesaurus is the official subject vocabulary of the database (e.g., Medical Subject Headings for MEDLINE). When we check “Search words in thesaurus” and search a topic (e.g., Breast Cancer) the first action MEDLINE will take is to find a Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) match. In other words, we want to see if our term is official terminology. We can only search one topic at a time in the thesaurus. When we combine terms with AND, OR, NOT the thesaurus feature will not work.

Next