Q. I am doing a research paper on organ donation. I am struggling finding any journal articles on research and information. Any articles, guidance,

Hi Jessica,

The sources you will want to use will vary depending on the focus of your research question. Do you have background information on your topic? If not, try searching the library catalog for books that might give you an overview of the issues: http://unomaha.worldcat.org/ CQ Researcher also has an article on organ donation you might find helpful to gather information about controversies surrounding the topic.

For articles that can give you current research on organ donation, you have a lot of options, depending on what kind of perspective you are coming from for your paper. For a medical perspective, you might want to try searching in databases such as Medline, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition, or BioMed Central. For a biological perspective, you might want to try databases such as ScienceDirect, Web of Knowledge/Web of Science, or Biological Sciences. If you were planning on a more humanistic perspective (e.g. emotions or decisions surrounding organ donation) you might try PsycInfo or PsycARTICLES.

I would suggest looking at our list of databases by subject to see what some of the recommended databases might be: http://libguides.unomaha.edu/content.php?pid=461566&sid=4153962 You might try the categories "Medicine and Health," "Biology," "Psychology" or whatever else sound helpful to you.

Whe you are searching in the databases, think about the search terms you are using and rework your search to get better results. If you aren't finding enough results, try broadening your search; if you have too many results that aren't relevant enough, try adding keywords to get more targeted results. It helps to think of synonyms of your keywords, so for example, instead of just searching for "organ donation" you might try "organ transplantation", "tissue donation", "DONATION of organs, tissues, etc.", "TRANSPLANTATION of organs, tissues, etc.", "ORGAN donors" and others. I like to look at the subject terms of articles that look relevant to find new keywords to search for. Organ donation is a pretty broad topic, so you'll probably have to target your results - for example, if you are looking for specific types of organ donation, you can also add that into your search (e.g. "organ donation" AND kidney).

For more help in the "Health, Physical Education and Recreation" subject area, you can get in contact with Melissa Cast Brede, at mcast@unomaha.edu or 402-554-3130. We don't have a designated medical librarian here, but if you need more detailed help with medical subjects, you could try contacting the librarians at UN-MC's McGoogan Library of Medicine: http://www.unmc.edu/library/askus.htm

Feel free to write back for more information. Hope this helps!