Some sources are self-explanatory. If you're interested in what people are posting on TikTok about a certain subject, you might open up the TikTok app on your phone and search for a related hashtag, word, or phrase. If you want to see if there is a Wikipedia article on a topic, most likely you will search for the topic in Google or another Internet search engine and Wikipedia will be either the top result or close to it.
But other sources aren't as straight forward. We can we go to find items like magazines, newspapers, or trade journals? What about academic journals or books? Are we only supposed to use the library's databases, or can browsing Google actually be useful?
When you first go to the library website, the search box that you see on the home page takes you to MCPHS SmartSearch (see more on that below). To find the rest of the library's databases, click the link that says A to Z Databases. That will take you to a list of the 200+ databases that the library has access to. While some of the databases will find you articles or information on a wide variety of topics, some are very specialized and concentrate on specific subjects like drug information or human anatomy videos. To see what databases the library offers on particular topics, you may click on the All Subjects drop down menu at the top of the screen and try clicking on different options.
MCPHS Smart Search allows you to search across the Library's collections and includes:
*A relatively small amount of content that the MCPHS Library has access to is not discoverable through Smart Search.
The two videos below will walk you through basic use of the MCPHS Smart Search database. The first video shows actually performing a search and some of the limiters that are available, while the second video talks about the information found in source records and how to find the full text of the source you're interested in.
| Boolean Connector | Purpose |
|---|---|
 |
ANDConnects different concepts (keywords). Narrows down the number of results. |
 |
ORConnects synonyms. Expands the number of results. |
 |
NOTExcludes a concept. Use with extreme caution (even librarians don't use this one much). |
These are some examples of how each type of Boolean operator looks when used with keywords:
It expands the number of results on the topic.
| Examples Topics of Interest | Search terms connected by OR |
|---|---|
| College Students | college OR university OR higher education OR undergraduate OR post secondary |
| Racism | racism OR racial bias OR prejudice OR systemic racism OR racist |
| online courses | online education OR online learning OR online teaching |
| learning communities | community OR engagement OR connection OR presence |
It narrows down the number of results.
| Example Topics of Interest | Search terms connected by AND |
|---|---|
| College students experiences of racism. |
college OR university OR higher education OR undergraduate OR post secondary AND racism OR racial bias OR prejudice OR systemic racism OR racist |
| The role of engagement in successful online courses. |
community OR engagement OR connection OR presence AND online education OR online learning OR online teaching |
Use with extreme caution.
| Example Topic of Interest | Search terms connected by NOT |
|---|---|
| Quitting tobacco, but just smokeless tobacco (eg vaping). | Tobacco cessation NOT smoking |
| Cloning, but excluding sheep. | Cloning NOT sheep |
...uses the asterisk (*) to end a word at its core, allowing you to retrieve many more documents containing variations of the search term. Truncation can also be used to find the singular and plural forms of a term.
Example: educat* will find educate, educates, education, educators, educating and more.
...is when you put quotations marks around two or more words, so that the database looks for those words in that exact order.
Examples: "higher education," "public health" and "pharmaceutical industry."
... is when you read the reference list of an article to find potential additional sources for your own research AND when you use a citation database (eg Scopus, Google Scholar) to find more recent publications that have cited the article you're already using.
Here at MCPHS, we use Library of Congress call numbers to organize our print books. A call number is a combination of letters and numbers that acts like an address to finding things on the shelves. Read call numbers from left to right, and top to bottom.
This chart will help you decode them a bit more. If you still have questions please contact the Reference Desk!
|
The first set of letters is alphabetical. |
H |
HA |
HB |
HC |
|
The following set of numbers is in numerical order. |
B |
B |
B |
B |
|
The following letters (after the decimal point) are alphabetical. |
KF |
KF |
KF |
KF |
|
The following numbers are in decimal order. Note that .C263 comes between .C26 and .C27. |
L |
L |
L |
L |
|
There may be another line of letters and numbers. These will be in alphabetical and decimal order |
PS |
PS |
PS |
PS |
|
A publication date may follow. In order by date or “nothing before something” |
B1200 |
B1200 |
B1200 |
B1200 |
|
A copy or volume number may follow. |
B1200 |
B1200 |
B1200 |
B1200 |
If you come across an article or book that is not in our collections, you can still get it! Just use Interlibrary Loan to request that we get you a copy of it. We'll borrow it from another library, and get it to you (usually an electronic copy) in a few business days.
It will automatically be an option in most databases, or you can fill out the form: InterLibrary Loan