Archive |
Books@Ovid EnhancementsThe HSLS electronic books collection has grown to more than 600 volumes, and notable among these e-books is the Books@Ovid collection <www.hsls.pitt.edu/resources/databases/ovid>. Comprised of 65 electronic books, and a recently enhanced search platform, Books@Ovid covers broad subject areas including clinical medicine, behavioral and social sciences, health professions, life sciences, and nursing. The collection can be accessed through the HSLS Databases by Title page, or by individual book title via PITTCat for the Health Sciences or the Electronic Books by Title list. New browse options allow you to search Books@Ovid by title and subject, as well as by "back-of-the-book" index browse, which provides links to the page where the indexed concept is discussed. 
Searching is also available through the same familiar Ovid Main Search page used for searching MEDLINE, PsycINFO, etc. Within this search page, Books@Ovid defaults to Natural Language searching. Simply enter a direct question or description of a topic in your own words; use of medical subject headings (MeSH) is not required. The database then discards insignificant words (e.g., for, of, in), and applies synonym expansion - adding word variations, alternate names of drugs or diseases, acronyms, hyponyms, and alternative spellings. (If you prefer to search without expansion, place quotation marks around a phrase to turn off this feature.) Search results are retrieved at the paragraph level, eliminating the need to scroll through entire chapters to locate your results. The results list provides the best results at the top, via relevancy ranking. Each record is given a starred ranking and those with the most stars are the most relevant. Books@Ovid searches terms using the Boolean operator or. Since or searching increases the number of search results, it is important to be as concise as possible, and give preference to nouns over verbs as search terms. Limits can be applied to Books@Ovid search results, including book subsets, subject categories, and publication types (i.e., quick reference, nursing practice). Other features include "Check Spelling" and the Email JumpStart feature, which generates URLs for sections within chapters, allowing users to easily send the results of a search to colleagues. (To access the results, however, the email recipient must also have access to the Books@Ovid database.) Contact any HSLS Reference Desk for more information about Books@Ovid. --Linda Hartman |
