University Libraries

Need an idea of a topic? Check these places:

• Look at government institutions to see what they are talking about, researching, etc. Often, they will have highlights on the homepage of trending topics.NIH - National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease, or the CDC- Diabetes, or the Department of Health and Human Services: Healthy People 2030 - Diabetes
• Same with professional organizations and associations, like the American Diabetes Association for a national focus. International focus, look at the World Health Organization - Diabetes. If you want to focus more locally, go the Diabetes Institute associated with OHIO (news and overview of research).

Have a topic in-mind? Great!

Next you may need to think about narrowing that topic a bit. This may take some exploration. Some ways to narrow:

• Geographical area: Appalachia, Ohio, Rural, etc.
• Population: Children, Elderly, Refugees, etc.

Sometimes you will need to search your topic, even at it's broader stage, to see what the literature has to offer. Ideas will come!

Video on Casually Narrowing Your Topic

In this super-short video I demonstrate ways to casually narrows a health topic by perusing the existing literature in ArticlesPlus. Topic: gestational diabetes.

Search a Library Database:

• Food Science Source
• PubMed
• See other options on my Finding Articles tab

Use These Searching Tips:

1. No full sentences, ever, even with Google
2. Intentionally choose the words you use to search
3. Include some synonyms to those words
4. Utilize proper search strategy (AND/OR/*)

Video on Searching an Example Topic, Strategically

The video below will demonstrate how to search using one of the databases and search tips listed above for this example topic: Which type of diet is best for adults with type 2 diabetes: low-carbohydrate or low-fat?

This video discusses resource credibility and how to evaluate different resources.

Topics include: peer-review vs. scholarly, how to evaluate resources, and I will be introducing a tool I created to help quickly evaluate journal articles.

<--- All of the resources/tools utilized are available on the Evaluating Resources tab on this guide.