Research Path - SER 100 - Personal Health - LibGuides at Seton Hill University

Start Here

MedlinePlus is a GREAT starting point. It will give you an overview of your health topic and then link you to solid, reliable information about it. Look for a "Health Topics" page about your topic; if there isn't one, use the search box. The NIH website is another great place to do a search for your topic. You will find reliable information that is a mix of patient-focused material and scientific literature (see below, in the Articles section, for more about that).

MedlinePlus
Health information from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health-- this site is targeted to consumers, patients, and their families
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Official website of the National Institutes of Health

Books - Comprehensive Overviews

Your best bet for finding health books in our collection is Ebook Central.

Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
The library's ebook collection (also searchable via the library's regular catalog, HillCat).

Dig Deeper - Articles

Peer-reviewed articles are the "gold standard" for college research sources. You can find them in the Library's databases, and you can find a lot of high-quality peer-reviewed medical articles on websites provided by the U.S. National Institute of Health.

Medical research can be challenging to understand. Check out these links for help making sense of the peer-reviewed science you find:

Library Databases:

Academic Search Elite This link opens in a new window
A good general-purpose database that includes both scholarly and popular material covering virtually all subject areas. Some items are available in full text and others are indexed only. Utilize the Subject Terms button in the top bar for more precise results.
CINAHL with Full Text This link opens in a new window
CINAHL® with Full Text is the world's most comprehensive source of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 610 journals indexed in CINAHL®. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index - with no embargo. Full-text coverage dates back to 1981.
MEDLINE This link opens in a new window
From the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE contains a wealth of authoritative information about the health sciences and the health care system. Be aware that many of these will need to be accessed via interlibrary loan. Use the MeSH terms link (available in the Advanced Search options) for more precise results.
SPORTDiscus This link opens in a new window
Full-text coverage of 550 sports & sports medicine journals. Many articles relating to general nutrition concerns, in addition to sports nutrition, can be found here.

Open-Access Databases:

PubMedCentral
"...A free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine."
PubMed
This site allows you to search over 22 million records. While it includes content from PubMed Central, it is more comprehensive in scope. Some material will be available in full-text access and some will be citation information only. Check our holdings through Publication Finder to see if we have access to the full text through the library's collections.