Brief Guide to Ovid Web Searching

Ovid Web is a search engine and web-based interface for the following databases: MEDLINE, CINAHL, AIDSLINE, CancerLit, BioethicsLine, HealthSTAR, Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI), International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA), Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) - Best Evidence, EBM - Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Books @ Ovid (textbooks).

Full-text articles from recent years of approximately 650 biomedical journals are linked to the databases. Users also can browse the table of contents of these journals and link directly to articles of interest.
For more information, see the Wilson Dental Library's Ovid web page. Ovid at the Dental School

Connecting to Ovid Web Online

From the USC network or from remote stations connecting via PPP to a USC computer

Go to Ovid at the Dental School
Click on START OVID

Logging Out

ALWAYS click on the Logoff button or Logoff at the top of the page when you are finished with your search session. If you don't, you and other users may be locked out of Ovid for a time.

Author Searching
Click on the Author button to search for documents written by a specific person. The command line will prompt you to enter a last name, followed by the first initial (if you know it). From the resulting Index Display, choose all applicable author names.

Journal Searching
Click on the Journal button to search for documents that appear in a particular journal. The Command Line will prompt you to enter the first few words of the journal name, without abbreviations. From the Index Display, choose the journal name that matches your query.

Subject Headings Trees
Type in a SINGLE subject word or phrase on the Enter Keyword or phrase line. Make sure that Map Term to Subject Heading is checked if this function is available in the database you are searching. Click on the Perform Search button.

Your keyword will map to a Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) in the databases where this function is available.

Mapping

(Available in MEDLINE, CINAHL, AIDSLINE, BioethicLine, HealthSTAR, and CancerLit.)

Mapping will help you find relevant subject headings for your term. If Mapping is not available in your database, the term will be searched in the keyword fields of that database.

Click on a Subject Heading to view its tree-related terms that are more general and more specific.
Select the Explode box if you wish to retrieve citations for the selected term and all of its more specific terms.
Select the Focus box if you wish to limit your search to those documents in which your subject heading is considered the major focus of the article.
If your search did not map to a desirable subject heading, select the box in front of Search as Keyword.

Subject Headings Trees

Terms in the tree go from more general (left) to more specific (right).
The term in bold is the one that you chose to view.
To view the tree for a different term, click on the term.
To add terms to your search, select one or more terms by clicking in the box before the term and then click on Continue.
If you select more than one term, you can combine them with the term AND or OR.
To read the definition of a term, click on for the scope note.

Subheadings

Click in the box in front of Include All Subheadings or to find particular aspects of a topic, select the subheadings you want from the list.

Limit Set

Click on the Limit button to restrict the results of a search to a specific limit(s) such as language, publication type, or latest update. Select one of the search sets and then select one or more specific limits from the list of available limits. One or more common limits located under the Enter Keyword or phrase line can be selected before you create a search set.

Combining Terms with Boolean Operators

Use the Boolean operators AND, OR or NOT to combine sets.

Examples:
Apples AND pears
The articles must discuss BOTH CONCEPTS.

Apples OR pears
The articles could discuss EITHER apples or pears.

Apples NOT pears
The articles must discuss apples but NOT MENTION pears.

Truncation

Use $ to retrieve unlimited suffix variations.
computer$ will find computer and computers.

Use # to replace exactly one character.
wom#n will find woman and women.

Use ? to replace 0 or 1 character.
colo?r will find color and colour.

Truncation does not work with the mapping feature.
Displaying and Printing Records

Select the records you want to display or print by clicking in the box before the record. Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Citation Manager and select the desired options.
Click on Display button. Wait until the entire display is completed before printing. If you don't wait, you may receive a partial printout.

To print, use the print command on your web browser. For example, in Netscape and Internet Explorer, go to the File menu and select Print.

REMEMBER: You MUST click on the Display button BEFORE you print.

Some of the information in this guide was taken from materials provided by Ovid Technologies, Inc.