CINAHL (EBSCO - Cummulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literatuer) (Trent subscription)

Medline (through Ovid) (Trent Subscription)

Bibliography of Native North Americans (from EBSCO) (Trent Subscription)

Canadian Health Research Collection (ebrary) (Trent Subscription)

Proquest Environmental Science Databases - search several databases at once (Trent Subscription)

Web of Knowledge (Trent subscription) - description

Arctic Health Publications (National Library of Medicine/University of Alaska Anchorage)

ASTIS (Arctic Science and Technology Information System, University of Calgary - a database of publications about northern Canada)

Caninuit (a Canadian database that describes magazines, journals, newspapers and newsletters of Canada's Inuit peoples and communities)

Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database (CIHR)

Environmental Health & Toxicology (US Department of Health and Human Services)

First Nations Periodical Index (search 20 journals with mainly Canadian content)

iportal: Indigenous Studies Portal Research Tool (University of Saskatchewan)

Metis Health Literature & Statistical databases (Metis Centre of NAH0)

Native Health Database (University of New Mexico - Health Sciences Library & Informatics Centre)

Aboriginal Canada Portal

Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy

Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada

Assembly of First Nations

Centre for Aboriginal Health Research - University of Manitoba

Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments - Universite Laval

First Nations and Innuit Health - Health Canada

Institue of Aboriginal Peoples' Health - Canadian Institutes of Health Research

National Aboriginal Health Association

Keyword searching - With a keyword search you look for a word, no matter where that word appears. If you like, you can specify that the word be in a particular field (e.g. the title, author, or subject), but it can be in any position (beginning, middle, or end).

• Think of other words which express the same concepts as those you're looking for.  Keep in mind that the system searches for the exact letters you type, and not the general ideas they express. The system doesn't think. So you have to plan for single and plural, more specific and more general terms, nouns, adjectives, and verbs, etc.
  
  For example, for the topic 'Exposure to environmental contaminants through diet in northern indigenous peoples'', keywords to consider may include:

• To search for a phrase many databases require quotations marks around the words. Otherwise, the database assumes an AND between the words and will search for them seperately. Keep in mind every database is different so you should check the HELP section to see how that database searches phrases.
  
  Eg. "first nations"
  
  
• Truncation and wildcards are used to find variations of words.
  
  Truncation will find any ending for the root of a word. The truncation symbol in most journal databases is the asterisk *.
  
  E.g. diet* will find diet or diets or dietary
  
  Wildcards are used within a word, to represent any letter.
  
  E.g.p*ediatric will find pediatric or paediatric

Combining Keywords

• When you use AND, you are specifying that both terms must be found in every item found
  
  E.g. contamina* and food* and arctic and indigenous
  
  
• When you use OR, you are specifying that items have either of the terms, but not necessarily both. Use an OR between synonymous or similar terms for a concept.
  
  E.g. aboriginal* or indigenous or inuit
  
  
• Some databases provide search forms (usually in an Advanced search screen) so that you don't need to type in AND or OR. For those that don't, you need to place parentheses around those terms that have OR between them.
  
  E.g. (diet* or nutrition* or food*) and (contamina* or pollut*) and (northern or arctic or nunavut) and (indigenous or aboriginal or inuit)
  

Narrowing your results

• Check the database for ways to limit your results to:
  • Language – e.g. English
  • Publication Type e.g. Empirical study, case study
  • Scholarly articles/Peer Reviewed articles
  • Date range
• Check the record where your search terms matched. The best matches for topics are in fields like Subject or Title. Search specific fields if there is an Advanced or Expert search option.
• Use Subject Headings or Descriptors if available to increase the relevancy of your results
• Add another concept to your search using the Boolean operator “AND”
  

Getting the Full-Text

Sometimes the database you are searching also provides full text journals. In this case you may see below or next to the citation a 'Full-Text' link to the article.

If you do not see a Full-Text link, this does not always mean we don't have the article. It may be available from another source. In this case, to determine if Trent has the full-text of an article, click on . This icon can be seen near each citation in a database.

Note: If you see the notation below a citation, “ Trent Library does not have this journal”, please ignore as it is not always accurate. GetIt! Trentwill be able to better tell you if we have the journal.

If an article is not available, you can request an InterLibrary Loan (ILL) through RACER. Keep in mind articles via ILL are not available overnight, so this service is only useful if you have enough time to receive the article before your project is due. We recommend that you allow 7-10 days. For more information and to register for an account please go to the RACER web site.