Nursing, community and public health

Using databases

A database search is subject specific and is a more strategic search than searching on Discover.

It can help you find information quickly and efficiently and allows you to combine search topics, use alternative search terms, to filter and narrow your results (by date or subject area for example) and save your searches for later.

See below for recommended key databases in your subject area.

Key databases

A full list of all the databases we subscribe to is available from the Database A-Z.

Tip: the Database A-Z is for finding databases by name only. You cannot enter search terms here.

Google Scholar versus Library Databases

Google Scholar is a good place to start research, test search terms and get a broad overview of the research that is available on a topic. However, you should not rely on Google Scholar alone for a number of reasons:

• It tends to generate very high numbers of results, many of which may not be relevant to your search criteria
• Covers many different subject areas making it harder to find research that is related to your field of study
• Not restricted to scholarly peer-reviewed content
• Limited options to refine a search

In comparison, databases often focus on a particular field of study,  provide many options for refining and limiting results and will retrieve high-quality scholarly content.

A search for "mental health" AND "climate change" on Google Scholar returns about 132,000 results:

Here is the same search using ProQuest Public Health database using the option to find the terms in the citation or abstract only and also with filters applied for scholarly peer-reviewed articles. This returns about 432 results:

This is a more effective way to search and leaves far fewer results to screen through.

Note: If you are undertaking a literature search for a dissertation or honours project you will be required to use subject databases and provide evidence of database searches. 

Fulltext access to journal articles

Not all databases will host the full text of the article you need. Here are some tips to help you locate the the fulltext article 

• Search Discover using the article title.
• To check if we hold a specific journal and if available online or in print, search Discover using the journal title.
• You can also try a search using Google Scholar for an open access journal article. Search by the article title.

Watch our short video for more help.

Finding and accessing full text

This video demonstrates how to find and access the full text of journal articles.

Inter-library loan

You can request a journal article or a book not available in our Library stock via our Inter-library loan (ILL) service. View our Inter-library loan webpages using the link below for more details on how to submit a request and contact details for ILL team.

Journal articles, conference papers and book chapters are supplied electronically where possible but some processing time is required for ILL requests so we recommend factoring this in to your time management for your assignment/dissertation or honours project.

Help and support on the ILL process including frequently asked questions are also available on our ILL webpages.