Attention Nurses – CINAHL CEU Awarded ANCC Accreditation

The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) has awarded two years’ accreditation to Cinahl Information Systems beginning in August 2009. The ANCC is the American Nurses Credentialing Center. This accreditation is a great honor and demonstrates CINAHL ’s support for professional continuing education opportunities.  For more information about the accreditation process visit the ANCC website.

Walden University students, faculty and staff have access to the CINAHL CEU through the Walden University Library. To access the CEU topics, lessons and exams, go to the Walden library website and browse to the Research Databases list. Open the CINAHL database from the list of databases. In the top blue bar select More and click the quick lessons. This will open a browser to look up CEU lessons on a 100+ of topics.

The modules  will take between an hour to several hours to complete. You should be able to download and print out your certificate of completion.

Questions?  Please contact the library:

http://tinyurl.com/askwaldenlibrary

Walden Library Webinars: Sept. 21st – Sept. 26th

Would you like more information about the Walden Library, online resources and scholarly research?

Please join us for a series of live, online presentations hosted by the Walden Library.

Follow this link for complete information regarding schedule and attendance:

http://library.waldenu.edu/Services_27386.htm

Sessions being offered from Sept. 21^st to Sept. 26th:

Introduction to the Walden University Library

An introduction to the library’s collections and services. Recommended to any student who is new to the Walden Library.

Evaluating Online Resources

Which sources are scholarly, reliable and useful for your Walden research? Covers peer-reviewed journals as well as Web resources.

Advanced Searching Strategies

Get more out of your library research! Learn techniques for conducting more precise searches. Includes use of subject indexes, Boolean searching, citation tools and more.

Full schedule and information:

http://library.waldenu.edu/Services_27386.htm

Questions?  Please contact the library:

http://tinyurl.com/askwaldenlibrary

Business Source Premier Database (BSP) – More than just Articles!

One of the more versatile databases available to you at the Walden University Library is the Business Source Premier database, which is listed on the Library’s Research Databases page (http://library.waldenu.edu/JournalArticles_ResearchDatabases.htm).

This modern electronic resource has a wide variety of quality materials available for you to use when you research business, management, human resources, economics, and government policy topics. At the main database search screen, you can type in your subject terms or keywords in the search boxes, then scroll down and click on the full-text search limitation feature. (There is also a peer-reviewed search limitation feature, which is very important in article searches, but this really does limit what you will get in a search, and many of the useful items mentioned below are not peer-reviewed, and you do not want always want to exclude them.)

Now just down below the search boxes is an area that has even more search limitation features, so that, depending on what you are trying to do and the type of information that you need, you can limit the results to Case Studies, Obituaries, Working Papers, Company Reports, Editorials, Proceedings, and Industry Overviews.

Over on the right side of the database search screen there is a column where you can click to browse the titles in the available resource categories, such as Books and Monographs, Company Profiles, Trade Journals, Industry Profiles, Market Research Reports, Country Reports, and SWOT analyses.

Many of these materials are not available free via the Internet or in our other databases, so use this excellent tool to pull up some unique materials that can give your project the necessary solid documentary foundation that can lead to positive research results.

Give this a try and see how it works for you. And if you have any questions, you can always call the Walden Library Reference Desk at 1-800-930-0914, or click on the ASK – A – LIBRARIAN button on the Walden Library homepage, and e-mail us a reference question.

Happy Searching!

Library Closed for Labor Day

The Walden University Library will be closed on Monday, September 7 for the Labor Day holiday.  We will re-open on Tuesday, September 8 at 8am EDT.

National Guideline Clearinghouse

Health care professionals should know about and utilize this valuable resource! The National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) is a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. This resource synthesizes the research associated with clinical practice guidelines in all areas of health care and delivers them in a streamlined format online.

The National Guideline Clearinghouse is accessible online at http://www.guideline.gov/

Many of the guidelines are maintained in full text linked on the left margin of the summary page. If the full text is not available from NGC, the details for obtaining the full text will be posted.

The National Guideline Clearinghouse’s mission is to provide physicians, nurses, and other health professionals, health care providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers and others an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines and to further their dissemination, implementation and use.

Please take advantage of this valuable resource and make it a must search source as you advance in your health care career.

The Sage Databases: Tips for Use

Walden Library subscribes to many different databases owned by different companies.  Many students are familiar with the databases owned by a company named EBSCO.  Several other databases from different vendors look and act like the EBSCO owned databases, while others act quite differently.

I’ll highlight a few of the most frequent questions we hear when students are using the databases owned by Sage.  Those databases are:

Education: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
Health Sciences: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
Management & Organization Studies: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
Political Science: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
Psychology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection

Here are some “nitty-gritty” tips and facts about the features in Sage to keep in mind:

1.  ALL articles you find in the Sage databases are from peer-reviewed journals!  You cannot limit your results to “peer-reviewed” because they already ARE all peer-reviewed.

2.  When you do a search, make sure you have chosen the option to search only in “SAGE Content Available to Me”.  If you choose “All Sage Content” you will see results that are not actually available to you in full text right in the Walden databases.

Sometimes this is a good idea to open your search to “All Sage Content” when you want to be exhaustive in your search and you have time to go outside of the Walden databases to get the articles (by using a local library, Document Delivery Service, etc.).  But, if you search “All Sage Content”, you cannot easily tell which articles ARE in full text through Walden and which ones are not.

When you click on an article that Walden does not actually own in full text, Sage will ask you to login with a personal subscription (which you don’t have) or ask you to purchase the article (when we could help you try to get it for free instead).    So, please be aware that you don’t have to login to Sage (and can’t) and that you do have other options for obtaining non-full text articles in Sage other than purchasing those article directly from the database.

3.   You can “register” in Sage to save citations and searches (like a myEBSCOhost folder) without purchasing an individual subscription.

When in a Sage database, click on the tab that says “My Tools”.

In the green bar below the tabs, click on Saved Citations/Searches.

Now look at the last option on this screen:

Register for Access – Register online for access to My Favorite Journals and Content Alerts features.

Fill out the registration form to begin saving citations and searches!

Exploring a different-looking database can be trying when you are used the look and features of a more familiar database.  Always remember, your librarians are here to help you navigate and use ALL of the Walden resources to the fullest!

Questions?  You can always Ask a Librarian!

Education: A SAGE Full-Text Collection	1917 – current
Health Sciences: A SAGE Full-Text Collection	1879 – current
Management & Organization Studies: A SAGE Full-Text Collection	1947 – current
Political Science: A SAGE Full-Text Collection	1890 – current
Psychology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection

State Library Databases

Many states have subscriptions to online databases that residents can access!  These databases are a great resource in addition to the databases that the Walden Library offers.  For a list of participating states, go to:

http://library.waldenu.edu/Books_23947.htm

Choose your state from the drop down menu in the middle of the page, underneath the bullet point for “Online libraries”.

Most of these state databases will require you to provide log in information.  Usually this is your library card number from your local public library.  More information on this process is available through your local public library.