Citation Verification
Sometimes you may have a portion of a citation to an article or book but not enough information to find it. You may know the author, what the article is about or the approximate publication date. You may have heard of a study in a class, in the newspaper, or on television. Or you may have a full citation but find that some portion is wrong, making it impossible to find the article. The following techniques can help you find the full information:
The University of Minnesota BioMedical Library keeps a file of health related
news items with citations to published accounts of the studies. Article references are taken from The Star Tribune - Newspaper of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis Edition). Citations are
arranged by the month of the newspaper story. A search feature is available.
Books in Print
Most books currently being published in the United States can be found in this
publication. You can find a book by author, title, or subject. If you don't know the
author or specific title, it may be difficult to find the book this way. You can scan the
appropriate subject pages but this can be very time consuming. For medical books which are
no longer in print or which you have been unable to find in Books in Print, try one
of the library catalogs listed below.
Books in Print is a multi-volume set on the back of the ready reference shelf.
Library Catalogs
You can take advantage of the search features of a library catalog to find a book on
which you have incomplete information. Many catalogs allow you to search for a word or
words in the title of a book. This can help find a book when you do not have the complete
title. Archie Dykes Library catalog can be a good
place to start looking for a book in the field of medicine. Because the National Library
of Medicine has an extensive collection, its catalog (LOCATORplus) is a useful resource to find more
information about a medical book.
Although Linda Hall Library does not collect
much in the field of medicine, it does have an extensive collection in the sciences.
Additional medical library catalogs can be found on the Other
Library Catalogs list.
Using Databases to Verify a Citation
You can frequently find a correct citation to an article by searching on the known
information. This technique is not useful for very recent citations such as newly
published articles reported in the news. There is a lag time of 2 months or more from the
time that an article is published, until it is listed in an index or database.
Select an appropriate database based on the subject of your search. Use MEDLINE for
medical journals, CINAHL for nursing etc.
If you know the author's name, search using the techniques discussed on the author searching page. If you know more than one
author, search for additional authors and combine the searches using the word and.
For example your first two searches may be as follows:
#1 green-j-p
#2 schmidt-* in au
To combine the two authors, search #3 will be:
#3 1 and 2
If you know a word from the title you may want to combine it with the known authors. If
you are unsure of the form of the word, try truncation using the asterisk (*).
#4 3 and transplant*
If you know the journal title, this information can be added to your search. In some
databases journal titles are abbreviated. Use the index to be sure that you are using the
correct form of the journal title.
#5 4 and n-engl-j-med
To further limit your search by publication year click on the limit button in
Ovid. Select publication year from the options listed. You can limit to a specific
year or to a range of years. People often underestimate how long ago an article was
published. To compensate for this, you may choose a year range which includes an extra
year or two. After selecting the years to search, click on the OK button.
To limit by publication year in Ovid, combine your search set with the publication
years at the find prompt. An example is given below:
#6 5 and py>1992
The PubMed Single Citation Matcher is a fill-in-the-blank form that allows
you to enter partial journal citation information to locate a MEDLINE record for
a specific single article, or items indexed from a particular volume or issue of
a journal to look for a single citation.
If you are unable to find the citation using these techniques, ask a reference
librarian for help.
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The University of Kansas Medical Center