Collecting Information on a Topic of Interest

Information gathering, also known as "negotiating the topic," concerns collecting information from different sources, using multiple applications and tools. It includes the following tasks: locating known information, harvesting metadata, following references to trace sources and uncover more information, using citation chaining or snowballing, and browsing and filtering information.

Databases

AccessMedicine

An extensive online collection of classic texts, cases, reference works, and other information in biomedical sciences and clinical disciplines.

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AccessNeurology

A collection of online texts, cases, procedures in neurology.

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AccessObGyn

A database using a range of resources that covers the spectrum of obstetrics and gynecology for anyone from student to practicing physician.

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AccessPediatrics

AccessPediatrics is a comprehensive online, mobile-optimized resource designed for pediatricians, residents, and students, covering the full spectrum of pediatric practice from neonatology to adolescent medicine.

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AccessPhysiotherapy

Online resource for physical therapy students, educators, and practicing professionals.

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AMED: Allied and Complementary Medicine

AMED is a unique indexing service that covers journals in complementary ("alternative") medicine (CAM), palliative care, and several other allied professions from 1985 to present. Many of the titles…

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ClinicalKey for Nursing

ClinicalKey for Nursing is an extension to ClinicalKey focused on nursing content, resources, and tools.

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CLIO

The complete Columbia University Libraries union catalog.

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Columbia University Web Archive

The Columbia University Web Archive is a curated, permanent digital repository capturing at-risk, subject-specific web content.

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Data Citation Index

Research data sets and data studies from a wide range of international data repositories in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

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Data.census.gov

Demographic and economic data portal hosted by the United States Census Bureau.

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Google Scholar

Search engine to broadly search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources.

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History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine integrates four bibliographies, the ISIS Current Bibliography of the History of Science, the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, the…

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LWW Health Library - Anesthesiology

A collection of online texts, cases, Q&A, and videos in anesthesiology published by Lippincott.

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LWW Health Library - Emergency Medicine

A collection of online texts, cases, and procedures in emergency medicine published by Lippincott.

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LWW Health Library - Medical Education

A collection of online texts, cases, Q&A, and videos in medical education published by Lippincott.

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LWW Health Library - Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapy-focused content published by Lippincott that covers orthosis, physical dysfunction, and foundational knowledge.

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LWW Health Library - Oncology

Collection of current, authoritative content specifically for oncology professionals to support clinical diagnosis, patient management, and treatment protocols.

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LWW Health Library - Orthopaedic Surgery

A comprehensive selection of e-book titles for orthopedic surgery departments and residency programs including procedure-focused texts and procedural videos.

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LWW Health Library - Physical Therapy

A collection of online texts, cases, Q&A, and videos in physical therapy published by Lippincott.

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National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Data and Statistics Gateway

Database hosted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a research agency focused on the study of worker safety and health.

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Nexis Uni

Nexis Uni is a full-text news service.

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Oxford Scholarship Online: Palliative Care

Also known as OSO Palliative Care, this database contains the full text and abstracts of books published by Oxford in the areas of palliative care.

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Proquest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary database and search tool for discovering theses and dissertations.

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SciFinder

SciFinder provides access to several Chemical Abstracts Service databases, including Chemical Abstracts, Registry, CASREACT, CHEMLIST, and CHEMCAT.

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Scite

Scite is designed to accelerate literature-based discovery by using AI to evaluate the credibility and impact of research articles.

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Scopus

Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources. Selected books, book chapters and technical reports are also indexed.

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StatPearls

StatPearls is identified by the National Library of Medicine as a study guide.

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The Cancer Imaging Archive

The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) is a service that de-identifies and hosts a large archive of medical images of cancer available for public download.

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Thieme MedOne Otolaryngology

A collection of classic texts, cases and images in otolaryngology from Thieme.

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Thieme MedOne Radiology

A comprehensive online reference for all medical imaging specialists.

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Vital Statistics Online Data Portal

A portal to the online data from the CDC's Division of Vital Statistics.

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Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine was created by the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996. The goal then, as now, was to archive the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers…

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Web of Science

A multidisciplinary citation index to the journal literature of sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities, Web of Science provides access to current information and retrospective data…

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Ebooks

JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis: 2024 Edition

Author

Aromataris, Edoardo (ed.); Lockwood, Craig (ed.), Porritt, Kylie (ed.); Pilla, Bianca (ed.); Jordan, Zoe (ed.)

Year

2024

ISBN

9780648848820

Subject

Knowledge Discovery

Systematic Reviews as Topic

Insights

AIDS History Materials at Archives & Special Collections

For nearly 40 years HIV/AIDS has been a worldwide pandemic. HSL’s Archives & Special Collections has acquired significant holdings documenting the response to this ongoing health crisis.

Discover the History of Women in Health Care at HSL's Archives & Special Collections

The Health Sciences Library's Archives & Special Collections offers several important resources for researchers interested in the history of women in the health sciences.

Discover the Wealth of Images Found in HSL's Archives & Special Collections

The Health Sciences Library's Archives & Special Collections has a wide range of images in a variety of media illustrating the history of the health sciences.

Family History Resources at Archives & Special Collections

Genealogy may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a health sciences library, but the Archives & Special Collections has a remarkable range of resources for ancestor hunters.

Filtering, Limiting, and Sorting: Managing Large Search Results Lists

Learn about how to overcome information overload and manage lengthy search results lists. We look at the nuances among filtering, limiting, and sorting features in databases.

Sources for Black and African American Medical History at Archives & Special Collections

Researchers curious as to what holdings Archives & Special Collections has documenting Black and African Americans at Columbia University Medical Center can find more information in this overview.

Knowledge Base Articles

Controlled Vocabulary in Databases

Learn how to find and use controlled vocabulary in select databases.

Explore a Topic of Interest with Controlled Vocabularies

Learn how to use controlled vocabularies and the subject heading record to explore a topic. See examples of MeSH terms, Emtree terms, and CINAHL Subject Headings.

Finding Print Books in the Library

Find the newest or most requested print books in the Knowledge Center.

How Do I Organize My References?

Organizing references using citation management software makes the entire process of managing and using citations much more efficient.

How to Access the Library's Books, Journals, and Databases

How to find and access books, journal articles, databases, and tools provided by the libraries at Columbia University.

How to Use a Finding Aid

Learn how to locate archival materials using a finding aid.

How to Use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to Refine and Expand Searches

Learn how to best use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) depending on the purpose of the literature search.

Identifying Search Terms for Your Literature Review

A practical guide to identifying keywords and subject headings for building effective and reproducible literature search strategies.

Locating Information from Earlier CUIMC Websites

Search archived websites for information no longer readily available online.

Locating Registered and Published Systematic Reviews

Learn sources and tips to look for registered and published systematic reviews.

Planning a Systematic Review

Learn steps, standards and deliverables necessary to initiate a systematic review.

Preliminary Topic Investigation

Learn the purpose, importance, and strategies of conducting a Preliminary Topic Investigation, also know as an exploratory search of the literature.

Preliminary Topic Investigation Checklist for Systematic and Scoping Reviews

How do you know if you've explored enough literature to ground your research project? This checklist can help guide you through the preliminary topic investigation at the start of a review.

Requesting Articles from Article Galaxy

Find out about a new way to get articles that Columbia isn't subscribed to.

Scoping Review Methods and Resources

Learn about the scoping review methodology and utilize appropriate resources to prepare for and conduct your review.

Selecting Bibliographic Databases to Search Literature for a Systematic Review

Guidance on how to identify and select bibliographic databases to conduct searches and locate relevant reports of published studies for a systematic review.

Systematic Review Methods and Resources

Learn about the systematic review methodology and utilize appropriate resources to prepare for and conduct your review

Translating an Initial Search into Other Databases

Translating searches from one database to another database is required for many research projects. Here are some approaches to consider when working on a translation.

Turning Ideas into Research Questions and Questions into Searches

Clear problem definition leads to focused research questions, efficient searches, and relevant evidence, avoiding misaligned or superficial solutions.

Using PubMed Filters in a Preliminary Topic Investigation

Too many search results in PubMed? Learn how and why to use PubMed Article Type filters to create clusters of the same publication types when exploring a new topic.

When Should I Use Borrow Direct?

If you are looking for a book that is checked out or not owned by Columbia University Libraries, try Borrow Direct.

Tools

All of Us Researcher Workbench

The All of Us Researcher Workbench is a cloud-based platform where registered researchers can access Registered and Controlled Tier data. Its powerful tools support data analysis and collaboration.

Babelmesh

Search MEDLINE/PubMed using medical terms or phrases in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Comparative Genomics Resource

The National Institutes of Health's Comparative Genomics Resource facilitates research into eukaryotic organisms and their genomic data through community collaboration and an NCBI Toolkit of interconnected and interoperable datasets and tools.

DMPTool

The DMPTool is a free open-source online application that helps researchers create data management and sharing plans (DMPs).

DNorm: Disease Named Entity Recognition and Normalization with Pairwise Learning to Rank

DNorm is an automated method for determining which diseases are mentioned in biomedical text, the task of disease normalization. Diseases have a central role in many lines of biomedical resear

EndNote

EndNote is a commercial reference management software designed to help researchers store, organize, and manage citations and bibliographies.

GNormPlus: An Integrative Approach for Tagging Gene, Gene Family and Protein Domain

GNormPlus: an end-to-end system that handles both gene/protein name and identifier detection in biomedical literature, including gene/protein mentions, family names and domain names.

LitCovid

LitCovid is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to 418,410 (and growing ) relevant articles in PubMed.

LitVar

LitVar is a semantic search engine for linking genomic variant data in PubMed and PMC.

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) Database

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the NLM controlled vocabulary thesaurus used for indexing articles for PubMed.

Open-i

Open-i service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open s

OpenAlex

OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of the global research system. It's named after the ancient Library of Alexandria and made by the nonprofit OurResearch.

PubTator3

PubTator3 is a text-mining tool for annotating the entire PubMed articles

SWIFT Review

SWIFT-Review (SWIFT is an acronym for “Sciome Workbench for Interactive computer-Facilitated Text-mining”) is a freely available interactive workbench which provides numerous tools to assist with p

The COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)

CORD-19 is a corpus of academic papers about COVID-19 and related coronavirus research.

The Polyglot Search Translator

The Polyglot Search Translator can be used to view examples of a search and how the syntax would be be translated into different databases.

Yale MeSH Analyzer

Users can input up to 20 PubMed IDs (PMID) at a time to collect MeSH Subject Headings and Author Keywords for search development.

Collecting Information on a Topic of Interest

Databases

Ebooks

Insights

Knowledge Base Articles

Tools

Tutorials