A very large amount of information is available to the student doing research in nursing. The North Platte Community College has libraries on the Vocational Campus and the McDonald-Belton Campus that contain about a thousand books on nursing topics. Both print and electronic periodicals are available although a much larger number of electronic magazines are available. Internet resources are numerous, although the quality of many sites is questionable.


Books - To find books, use the ecard online catalog.

Our ecard catalog is available over the Internet 24 hours a day.
  • Type in a topic word and start with a key word search.
  • Phrases should be entered one word on each line.
  • If the search had no results, use synonyms or a more general term.

Use WorldCat to find additional books.
  • Most books in this catalog can be obtained through interlibrary loan.
  • Print out a bibliography of the books you want and turn it in to the library.
  • The books should arrive in about a week.

Magazines - Paper and online versions

Paper copies of magazines are available for browsing or research.
  • Most of the nursing titles are on the Vocational Campus.
  • All of our magazines are listed.

Nursing research can be done using our online full-text periodical databases.
  • LexisNexis has a medical section that contains periodicals related to nursing.
  • ProQuest and Wilson contain some nursing journals.
  • ProQuest Nursing Journals provides 390 full-text current nursing and allied health journals and publications with indexing and abstracting for an additional 40 titles.
    • Nursing Journals is one of the databases in ProQuest.
    • Use the Databases selected link to deselect other databases and search only in Nursing Journals.

Additional materials can be located using ArticleFirst or PubMed
  • These databases do not contain full-text articles
  • Use our list of periodical titles to see if articles you find are online
  • If the title is not available, most articles can be obtained through interlibrary loan.

Most nursing journals have an online site.
  • Usually only a few articles are available for free which limits their usefulness for research.
  • For examples see AORN or RN
  • You may also use Google or other search engines to locate the Web site of a journal

Periodical databases can be accessed through the Internet 24 hours a day
  • Most databases can be accessed from home computers
  • Obtain a password from the nursing department or the library
  • For help, follow the directions on our home page or ask a library worker

Statistics

When you need to take count, find a relationship, or know what people are thinking; the following databases will help you find the numbers you need.

Internet

The challenge for any researcher is to find a manageable number of sites that contain high quality information as most sites are of questionable quality and the average search finds thousands of sites.
  • Excellent nursing sites are usually maintained by government agencies, universities, or reputable organizations.
  • Tutorials and guides to using the Internet for research are available.
  • General Searching-Links to different types of search engines are on the library's Internet page.
  • Nursing Gateways and directories-Provide aggregated information on nursing topics or have links to nursing sites
  • Health directories-Contain information from various sources or have links to health sites.