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Allied Health & Social Care

Library guide for programmes within the school of Allied Health & Social Care

Databases for Occupational Therapy

The Core databases are a good place to start when you're conducting research within your discipline; you can search for journals, articles, conference papers and eBooks which the University Library pays for you to access.

You need to have logged into UDo to use the databases and can access them both in the University and off campus.

You will be able to read many of the articles you find, in full, online and download a PDF copy to keep. On some sites you may see just the 'Abstract' or description of the article; in these cases you may be able to get the resource through our Inter Library loan service

Remember that you can search across even more resources by searching on Library Search but you will be less overwhelmed with the number of results you get back if you choose to search individual databases, and some databases are not included in Library Search so if it's one related to your discipline you will still need to search those databases separately.. You'll also have access to all of the search options each individual database provides.

Don't forget that many databases also allow you to create a personal account so that you can save your search strategies and your results to come back to later.

Cartoon person with a lightbulb over their head to signify a lightbulb moment or ideaIf you have trouble searching / using any of these resources, have a look at the Getting the most  from Subject Databases tab in the left-hand menu for videos, interactive tutorials, and other documentation.

 

If you're having trouble constructing your search string - finding appropriate keywords or synonyms, or you're trying to find an article to start you off, have a look at LitSense which is produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (U.S.) and can be used to search for terms from a sentence you type in.

This could give you some starting papers to harvest search terms from, to see the direction research has gone / is going in, and to identify authors of interest.

This doesn't mean you won't have to search the individual databases with a properly constructed search strategy (including search string), this is an entry-level step to help get you going, but don't stop here!

LitSense from NIH-NLM

 

 

 

 

 

 

These databases may be useful to search in addition to the core items listed on the previous tab. It will depend on what you're looking for and what you've found already or the subject are that you are looking for. If you're doing a piece of work at the level of an MSc thesis or a PhD then you may find it useful to search some of the resources listed here as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depending on the research you're conducting you may--or may not--find some of the resources listed here useful. Not everything will be useful all of the time but it's something to bear in mind. If in doubt, go to the database and look at what material is covered; you can then make your decision based on your research needs at that moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open Access resources are ones which contain freely available material--so no password or payment is needed to access the full-text of those resources. You may find that for some journals only part of the content is Open Access while the rest requires a subscription (often the latest content) but the majority of items listed here should be fully available.

 

 

 

This drop-down list will show the full list of resources that may be useful to you.

They are not all primary sources of information and they are not all 100% full-text.