Public Health Research Guide
- Find Background Info
- Find Books
- Find Articles
- Find Data and Statistics
- Citing Sources
Find Background Info
Background sources, such as specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries, are an essential piece of the research process. They can help you:
- Gather information about your topic and understand the scope of the research.
- Locate reliable sources and to clarify keywords.
- Pinpoint important authors, texts, ideas, and key words about the research area—knowing what the primary phrases and concepts are will help you a lot as you are searching library databases and online sources.
Global Issues In Context: Health and Medicine
Global Issues in Contexts integrates international news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, and statistics. The Health and Medicine page helps you gather useful background information in the field.
Search Global Issues in Context: Health & Medicine
Health Reference Center Academic
Discover periodicals and reference book content designed for both nursing and allied health students, as well as consumer health researchers.
Search Health Reference Academic
Credo Reference
Credo Reference is multi-publisher collection of high-quality reference titles covering everything from the arts to astronomy, law to literature, and science to Shakespeare. The collection currently contains over 162 titles taken from 36 different reference publishers and more titles are being added. Available titles also include a range of multimedia options, including thousands of high-quality diagrams, photographs, maps, and audio files.
CQ Researcher
CQ Researcher is the perfect answer for people who need a place to begin research on current topics. This weekly publication covers the most current and controversial issues of the day with complete summaries, insight into all sides of the issues, bibliographies, and more. Users may browse through articles in the current issue or search for past articles using words, dates, or other criteria.
Find Books
Print and e-books are valuable sources for academic research. They will help you gain an overview of your topic and often contain in-depth information about the scholarship or history of research on a subject. Some books are written by single authors, while others include essays or chapters by multiple scholars within a discipline. Don’t let the length of books intimidate you because you don’t need to read them from cover to cover. Look at the table of contents and index to find the sections that are relevant to your work.
Find Books Using GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other materials available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases. To get started, search by keyword or type in the title of a book here:
WorldCat
WorldCat lets you search for books, articles, videos, and other material that are available in libraries worldwide. If you are doing in-depth research on a topic and are considering requesting resources through Interlibrary Loan, WorldCat can help you discover resources that might not be in the Giovale Library collection.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
Interlibrary Loan is a service where patrons of one library can borrow books and other materials, and access journal articles that are owned by another library.
Explore Interlibrary Loan Materials
Utah Academic Library Consortium
Giovale Library participates in the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and Westminster College students have reciprocal circulation privileges at UALC partner libraries. Each UALC library has different circulation policies, but all require a current, valid, legal photo identification and proof of current enrollment at Westminster. Some libraries may also require other verification methods, so it is recommended that you contact the library you are interested in for details.
Popular Titles and Featured Texts
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health
Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic
Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know
Browse the Print Collection
The Giovale Library uses the Library of Congress Classification system, which divides collections into 21 basic classes using single letters of the alphabet. These classes also hold subclasses, allowing the library to implement more specific classes to make it easier for patrons to find materials. Medicine books can be found under the broad classification R. However, medicine is fairly broad so to narrow the collection to specifically nursing materials, we use the subclassification RT. These books can be found on the north end of the top floor of the library.
Find Articles
The Giovale Library provides access to a number of subject databases that you can use to find journal articles on topics within a specific discipline or field of study. The databases listed on this page are those that are most useful for finding research published in the field of public health.
GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other material available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases.
MEDLINE
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses (MeSH) indexing with tree numbers, tree hierarchy, and explosion capabilities to search abstracts from over 4,000 current biomedical journals. Included are citations from Index Medicus, the International Nursing Index, Index to Dental Literature, PREMEDLINE, AIDSLINE, BIOETHICSLINE and HealthSTAR.
PubMed
PubMed is the freely accessible version of MEDLINE and is the NLM's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. MEDLINE contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. The file contains over 11 million citations dating back to the mid-1960s. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources or have English abstracts.
Health Source: Consumer Edition
This full-text database covers a wide variety of subjects, including information on specific diseases as well as overall health topics. Subjects include fitness, nutrition, diabetes, aging, women's health, children's health, and more.
Search Health Source: Consumer Edition
Science Direct
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters. Journals are guided by eminent editorial boards and articles are rigorously peer-reviewed. Books on ScienceDirect cover 24 subject collections across disciplines such as biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, chemistry, clinical medicine, engineering, and environmental science.
Find Data and Statistics
You may want to use data sets for your research, below is a list of organizations that allow you to search for data. As always, if you can’t find what you are looking for, contact the Library.
United States Census Data
The Census Bureau is the leading source of quality data about the nation’s people and economy.
Search United States Census Data
USA.gov Data and Statistics
Find data about the U.S., such as maps and population, demographic, and economic data.
Search USA.gov Data and Statistics
Pew Research Center
A nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. The Pew Research Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research.
Google Dataset Search
Dataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across the Web through a simple keyword search. The tool surfaces information about datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web, making these datasets universally accessible and useful.
Kids Count
Provides data on the health and well-being of children and families in the United States.
World Health Organization
Includes data & statistics, reports, country profiles, and fact sheets. Organized by topics and countries.
Search World Health Organization
Utah Data
Access State of Utah datasets.
Citing Sources
Citation Resources
Properly citing your sources shows that you’ve done research to become knowledgeable about your topic and helps you avoid plagiarism. Explore citation resources to learn how to correctly cite sources based on style.
Need help with your research?
Get in touch with:
Katherine Paterson
Liaison Librarian for Public Health
801.832.2258
kpaterson@westminsteru.edu
Librarians are happy to answer questions via email, phone, or in-person.
Contact Katherine with a question or to schedule a research help appointment.
Faculty: Contact Katherine to suggest edits to this research guide.
Chat with a Librarian
Use the chat box below to ask the library staff a question. If chat is unavailable or we don’t respond quickly, please use the email form on our Get Research Help page and a library staff member will contact you as soon as we are available.