Veterinary Nursing Resources: Searching for Articles

Select a database(s) that indexes journal articles to search:

CAB Abstracts. Indexes 2,380+ journals covering the world’s veterinary literature. Links to Purdue Libraries e-journal holdings.

PubMed. Indexes 90 veterinary journals, and is the world's largest biomedical and human medical database.

Select terms or keywords to use in the search, for example:

     anemia        hemorrhage          rabies            necrosis          liver

             parrots              dogs             cattle              kitten

     treatment                   diagnosis            therapy          prognosis       

Hints: CAB Abstracts is a British database using both British & American spelling, such as tumours or tumors so search under both spellings can help search results. Using quotes around a key phase may help as well, such as "mammary tumors."   In CAB, use treatment, but in PubMed use therapy.

Combine terms using AND or OR, for example:

rabies AND cattle AND diagnosis
hemolytic anemia AND dogs AND (treatment OR prognosis)
"mammary tumors" AND cats AND therapy

Review search results (including Abstract or Complete Reference) for relevance:

• Search results appear with newest journal articles first
• First line of journal citation is usually the title of the article, second is authors, and third is name of journal (perhaps abbreviated) with volume, issue, page numbers. DOI, and year.  Can also view abstract of the article if available.

Can "Refine Results" of search using language or publication year if needed, for example:  English   1995-2010

Now select  desired articles and locate them online or in the library:

• In CAB Abstracts, click on the icon below each citation to see if Purdue has online access to the journal.
  Other databases will have displayed somewhere on citation page as well. 
   
• On the Libraries website [http:www.lib.purdue.edu], click on Online Journals to search for journal name. If available, click on desired years(s) to see online full text . 

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Training video introducing CAB Abstracts and giving searching tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Gannz-V-U

          Advanced searching of CAB Abstracts [http://www.cabi.org/Uploads/CABI/publishing/training-materials/resources-by-interface/thomson-WofK-user-guides/advanced-searching-cab-abstracts-WoK.pdf]
 

Click here for a tutorial about how to read scientific journal articles.