Tacoma Community College Library: Community Health: Finding Articles

Periodical Finder

Find a Journal by Title or Subject Area

Looking to see if the library subscribes to a specific journal? Use the Periodical look-up tool linked below. If you find a citation from an online (e.g. Google) search and want to know if the library can provide full-text access, this is a great way to check for that.

Periodicals A-Z
Click this link to see if the TCC Library has online or full-text access to a specific periodical (newspaper, magazine, or journal).

Finding Articles

Article databases

Searching the Article Databases

In the Community Health Program, you will often be required to use sources that come from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. The following databases are the best starting point for finding scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles related to health care.

CINAHL with Full Text
(Ebsco) The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health with Full Text provides access to over 600 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health.
PsycARTICLES
(Also known as APA PsycARTICLES).(Ebsco) Periodical database of peer-reviewed, scholarly, and scientific articles in psychology.
ProQuest Periodical Databases
Multiple periodical databases providing coverage of a wide range of topics, with a mix of popular and scholarly sources. Be sure to click the "Peer reviewed" box on the search screen to ensure that the sources you find are appropriate for your use in the Community Health Program.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
(Ebsco) Coverage of nursing and allied health topics, including pediatric nursing, critical care, mental health, nursing management, medical law and more.
ScienceDirect
A full-text database offering journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and 11,000 books, including reference works. (Tip: After searching for your topic, choose the "Refine by subscribed journals" feature on the results page to view the items you can access free of charge because you are a TCC student.)

PubMed
PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher Web sites (i.e. not all articles will be available to you).
Complete List of TCC Library Research Databases
Click here to view all of the research databases available at your TCC Library

Search terms & search tips

Search Tips

Phrase Searching

To force the search engine to look for two or more words in a particular order and with no other words in between, use the phrase search. Place the phrase in quotation marks: "diabetic foot" "culturally competent nursing"

Asterisks

If you are unsure of the form of a word (or the spelling!) use an asterisk as a wild card. For example: nurs* will return nurse, nurses, nurse's, nurses', nursing, and diabet* will return results containing diabetes, diabetic, diabetics

Boolean Operators

Use the "Boolean operator" AND to make sure that the search engine searches for all of your words or phrases. AND directs the search engine to provide results that contain the items on both sides of the operator, for example, intubation AND emergency
Use the "Boolean operator" OR to look for synonymous terms. For example, if I am wondering whether there is an organization centered around caring for obese patients, I might search Google like this: "bariatric nursing" AND (association OR organization OR society). This means I'll take any results that include the phrase bariatric nursing and any one of the other three terms.